An undated file photo of a district court in Daejeon, about 165 kilometers south of Seoul. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, April 7 (Korea Bizwire) — A professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) who received a suspended prison sentence for leaking self-driving car technology to China is set to appeal the verdict after a year and eight months.
The case was severely criticized by lawmakers during a parliamentary audit of government-funded research institutes in 2020.
A Democratic Party lawmaker criticized KAIST’s audit office for being too lenient and not responding appropriately in the early stages.
The professor, referred to only as A, was selected in a Chinese program to attract overseas high-level talents (foreign experts) from November 2017 to February 2020.
He was put on trial in February 2020 for violating confidentiality obligations by passing on research data on LiDAR technology, a key technology for autonomous driving, to a researcher at a university in China.
In the first trial held in August 2021, the court found that the research data leaked by A resulted in a rapid increase in Chinese researchers’ knowledge.
According to legal circles on Thursday, the Daejeon District Court is scheduled to hold an appeal hearing for A, who was charged with violating the Act on Prevention and Protection of Industrial Technology Leakage, on May 2.
The trial court sentenced A to two years in prison and three years of probation, explaining that although the technology leaked by A did not produce immediate economic results, he had a duty of confidentiality as the technology fell within the scope of high technology protected by law.
The court further stated that although the offense of leaking industrial technology that should be strictly protected is not light, the scale of personal gain was not significant.
Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
