The defendant's appeal is dismissed.

1. The summary of the grounds for appeal is that a propeller technical information file, etc. sent by the Defendant to the Co-Defendant A via K, is not known publicly and has an independent economic value, and it has not been kept confidential by considerable efforts.

Therefore, the above files, etc. cannot be deemed as "trade secret" and the judgment of the court below which convicted the defendant is erroneous in the misapprehension of facts that affected the conclusion of the judgment.

2. Determination

A. The relevant legal doctrine refers to any production method, sale method, and other technical or managerial information useful for business activities, which is not known to the public, has independent economic value, and is maintained in secret by considerable effort. Thus, insofar as a company that is the holder of trade secret strictly manages technical information, such as imposing a duty of confidentiality on its employees, etc., insofar as it is possible to reverse design and obtain technical information thereby, such circumstance alone cannot be deemed as impeding the viewing of such technical information as trade secret.

(see, e.g., Supreme Court Decisions 2006Do7916, Jul. 9, 2009; 98Do4704, Mar. 12, 1999). The phrase “not known to the public” in this context refers to the information that is not known to many and unspecified persons, such as the publication, etc., and thus, it is impossible to obtain such information from the holder without going through the holder. However, the content of which is commonly implemented by any other company around the world is disclosing the results of such testing.

Many academic sites or their academic grounds are open to the public.

The concept of design is included in the patent application document of a foreign country, open to the public.

Posium, Internet homepage, such as products of other companies or samples used in testing.