Crazy story: a few years ago somebody stole Samyang’s trade secrets and established a new lens company…
This is an update on my blog post "Is Samyang behind the Irix lens brand?" based on a recent comment by a reader:
"In 2015, six employees of Samyang bribed into handing over secret information and production technic to a Polish man for 33 million dollars. The police said there were tens of thousands of confidential data stolen. Many interchangeable lens manufacturing drawings, new product development, customer and manufacturing factory information etc. These six employees were placed under arrest, but the Polish man who established a company named T.... has vanished from Korea."
Here is a quote from a 2015 Korean news article on this topic (translated):
"Employees from a domestic camera replacement lens manufacturer were caught by the police while establishing and operating a similar company by stealing their trade secrets just before leaving the company.
On the 4th, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's International Crime Investigation Unit arrested Mr. Kim Mo (41), the vice president of T Company, on charges of violating the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act (acquisition of trade secrets), and arrested 6 people, including the conspirator, Jeong Mo (44), on the 4th.
In addition, they invested 3.3 billion won to establish T company and then wanted a nomination for H (37), a Polish man who took office as CEO.
Kim and others are suspected of leaking the company's trade secrets such as 'high-performance camera interchangeable lens manufacturing drawings', 'new product development plan', and 'customer information' before quitting S, a leading domestic camera interchangeable lens manufacturer.
In February of last year, while working as the head of the overseas sales team of S company, Mr. Kim transferred the computer files stored in the company's trade secrets to an external hard disk, and then received the investment from Mr. H, established T company, and took office as vice president.
Mr. H, a former European distributor of S Company, downloaded and used the file containing the 'new product development plan' with the groupware account and password of S Company, which Kim gave in advance to establish a similar company."
If you have any information on this topic, please leave a comment on this post or contact me anonymously.
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