Inbound number.
*: Supreme People's Court.
Wang Moumou was acquitted of infringing on trade secrets.
Standards for the review of forensic evidence in cases of infringement of trade secrets.
Keyword. The criminal crime of infringing on trade secrets, the judicial appraisal evidence, and the appraisal opinion were acquitted.
Basic facts of the case. The People's Procuratorate of Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province, alleged that in April 2011, the defendant Wang Moumou left the company without going through the normal resignation procedures when a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu sent him to Wuhan to participate in the trenchless horizontal directional drilling rig exhibition, and privately carried a full set of drawings and materials of various series of trenchless horizontal directional drilling rigs independently developed by the company to a machinery manufacturing company in Jiangsu through a USB flash drive. During his tenure as an engineer in the technical department of a machinery manufacturing company in Jiangsu, defendant Wang XX used the relevant drawings stolen from a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu to modify them and participate in the design of two series of horizontal directional drilling rigs, YQ3000-L (300T) and YQ3000-L (800T). A machinery manufacturing company in Jiangsu produces machines according to the YQ3000-L drilling rig drawings designed by Wang Moumou and sells them on the market. Identified by a center in Shanghai: the 280T trenchless horizontal directional drilling rig produced by a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu has six commercial secret points, and the YQ3000-L trenchless horizontal directional drilling rig produced by a machinery manufacturing company in Jiangsu infringes on two of the commercial secret points, namely "the design and technical integration of the whole machine of the GD2800-L horizontal directional drilling rig" and "crawler walking device and its technical parameters". According to the appraisal of a laboratory in Yancheng, a machinery manufacturing company in Jiangsu caused a total of RMB 1210994 of a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu$19 loss. The public prosecution held that the defendant Wang XX violated the rights holder's requirements for keeping trade secrets by obtaining and using the rights holder's trade secrets by improper means, causing major losses to the rights holder, and that his conduct violated the provisions of article 219 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, that the facts of the crime were clear, the evidence was credible and sufficient, and that he should be investigated for criminal responsibility for the crime of infringing trade secrets.
Defendant Wang XX put forward a defense: 1. The drawings he brought out were not deliberate, they were used by him in his work, they were in his computer, but he did not delete them when he left, and he did not want to use them for other purposes. 2. He did not use the drawings of a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu to make the equipment of a machinery manufacturing company in Jiangsu, and the equipment of a machinery manufacturing company in Jiangsu was redesigned by the company and had nothing to do with a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu. 3. A machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu has not taken confidentiality measures, and these drawings can be shared among colleagues and are not trade secrets.
Lu, the defender of the defendant Wang, put forward the following defense opinions: 1. A machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu is not the right holder of the trade secrets involved in the GD2800-L trenchless horizontal directional drilling rig. The two companies involved in this case, one is a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu and the other is a machinery manufacturing company in Shanghai, and the two companies are independent legal persons, each of which independently enjoys rights and assumes obligations. Even if the GD2800-L horizontal directional drilling rig involves trade secrets, the right holder should be a company in Shanghai and another shareholder, Shi, not a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu. 2. This case does not have the constitutive elements of the crime of infringing on trade secrets, and the crime is not established. (1) GD2800-L horizontal directional drilling rig does not contain technical information that is not known to the public. Trenchless equipment products are assembled from fixed fittings, according to the general knowledge of industry professionals, by observing the product can directly obtain a simple combination of product size, structure, materials, components. Moreover, the products of a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu participate in the exhibition every year, and the relevant information of its products has been publicized to the public and known to the public. (2) The technology involved in the case did not take corresponding reasonable and effective confidentiality measures. According to the statement of Chen Moumou, the legal representative of a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu, in the interrogation record on January 5, 2012, the company mainly manages trade secrets through the system, but there are no specific means. In 2011, after Wang Moumou left the company, the company installed encryption software on all computers, canceled all external networks, and blocked USB interfaces. 3. A laboratory in Yancheng conducted a loss appraisal based on the materials unilaterally provided by a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu, and the authenticity of the materials provided by a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu could not be guaranteed, and the appraisal conclusion was invalid. In summary, the public prosecution charged the defendant with the crime of infringing on trade secrets, and the crime cannot be established, and the defendant should be acquitted.
Cai, the defender of the defendant Wang, put forward the following defense opinions: 1. A company in Shanghai has produced and sold 2800-L horizontal directional drills in 2008, and a company in Shanghai has not signed a confidentiality agreement with its former employees, nor has it implemented confidentiality measures, and the employees of a company in Shanghai do not have a duty of confidentiality for the technical information of a company in Shanghai. If the transferor, a company in Shanghai, is not protected as a trade secret, then a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu cannot be used as a trade secret. A machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu only made a crawler beam, and other parts were produced by a certain company, so there was no secrecy at all. 2. The court shall not accept the appraisal report of the Intellectual Property Judicial Appraisal Institute of the Software and Integrated Circuit Promotion Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the on-site inspection by the appraiser is by means of measurement, and the information that can be seen through measurement is not a trade secret. The appraisal report of a laboratory in Yancheng was obviously wrong, the previous report of the institute believed that the profit from the sale of a complete machine was only 400,000 yuan, and the appraisal report believed that the sales profit of one of the components reached 210,000 yuan, which obviously lacked basis and violated objective facts.
After trial, the court ascertained that a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu had the relevant technology of trenchless horizontal directional drilling rigs. A machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu signed a labor contract with the defendant Wang, and signed relevant confidentiality clauses. In April 2011, when the defendant Wang Moumou was sent to Wuhan by a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu to participate in the trenchless horizontal directional drilling rig exhibition, he left a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu without going through the normal resignation procedures, and copied the technical drawings on his computer to a USB flash drive to a machinery manufacturing company in Jiangsu, mainly engaged in the research and development of the YQ3000-L horizontal directional drilling rig. From May 2011 to July 2012, a machinery manufacturing company in Jiangsu successively produced and sold three YQ3000-L horizontal directional drilling rigs.
On August 19, 2015, the Intermediate People's Court of Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province, rendered the (2014) Yan Zhi Xing Chu Zi No. 00011 Criminal Judgment: Defendant Wang XX committed the crime of infringing on trade secrets and was exempted from criminal punishment. After the verdict was announced, Wang appealed. On December 30, 2016, the Jiangsu Provincial High People's Court rendered the (2015) Su Zhi Xing Zhong Zi No. 00012 Criminal Judgment: 1. Revoke the (2014) Yan Zhi Xing Chu Zi No. 00011 Criminal Judgment of the Intermediate People's Court of Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province; 2. Appellant Wang XX is not guilty.
Reasons for the Adjudication. The effective judgment of the court held that, according to the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China, the determination of the facts of the case in a criminal case must be based on evidence. The evidence for conviction and sentencing at trial shall be credible and sufficient, and the facts ascertained in the case have been beyond reasonable doubt. In this case, according to the available evidence, there are certain doubts about whether the technical information of the crawler running device involved in the case of a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu is not known to the public, and whether the amount of losses involved in the case of a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu is more than 500,000 yuan, which cannot meet the standard of proof for the exclusion of reasonable doubt in a criminal case.
In view of the fact that the relevant technical descriptions and technical drawings in the samples in the appraisal of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in this case were not clearly reflected in the previous appraisal in Shanghai, and the units of some of the technical drawings were marked as a certain *** in Hubei, the objective authenticity of the above-mentioned samples should be further verified by comparing the products of a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu with the above-mentioned materials, etc., but in this case, only the technical data of a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu, the technical data of a machinery manufacturing company in Jiangsu and the products of a machinery manufacturing company in Jiangsu should be examined, and no corresponding verification of the samples was conducted. Therefore, there are still certain doubts about the quality of some of the samples provided by a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu in this case and whether they objectively and truly reflect its technical information, and it is difficult to eliminate relevant reasonable doubts, and it is difficult to accept the judicial appraisal of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in this case, and accordingly, it is believed that according to the existing evidence, it is not enough to prove that the technical information related to the crawler running device of the GD2800-L horizontal directional drilling rig involved in the case of a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu is not known to the public. The grounds of appeal and defense opinions of Wang XX and his defender were sustained and adopted.
In this case, according to the evidence of the second instance, there are great doubts about the objectivity and accuracy of the appraisal opinion of a center in Yancheng that the crawler assembly involved in the case is RMB 510,000 (including VAT), and reasonable doubt cannot be ruled out, which further leads to the inadmissibility of the amount of operating profit of the crawler assembly components made on the basis of the above-mentioned appraisal opinion. First of all, according to the appraisal content of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology involved in the case, the corresponding secret point of the crawler running device of a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu does not include the power system, so even if the technical secret involved in the case is established, the calculation of the loss amount should not consider the relevant profits of the power system. Secondly, in the evidence of the second instance, Ren Moumou, a staff member of a center in Yancheng, testified that when the Yancheng Municipal Public Security Bureau entrusted the center to verify, it did not provide the relevant drawings and parts list of the crawler assembly involved in the case, and the center made an external inquiry based on the parameters provided by the entrusting unit, and the relevant ** of the crawler assembly should include the engine. Jiang Moumou, a staff member of a company in Huai'an, and Zhang Moumou, a staff member of a company in Zhejiang, testified that the market ** excluding the crawler assembly of the power system (mainly including four wheels and one belt, tensioning cylinder, and hydraulic slewing transmission device) does not exceed 400,000 yuan (including VAT). The above evidence can prove that a center in Yancheng made an attestation of 510,000 yuan** on the crawler assembly, which cannot be ruled out including the power system**. Finally, according to the two appraisal reports of a laboratory in Yancheng, the operating profits of the horizontal directional drilling rig involved in the case and the crawler assembly were 40366473 yuan, 21166474 yuan, in the case of several other important core components at the same time, as one of the components of the horizontal directional drilling rig, the profit margin of the crawler walking device exceeds 50% of the profit of the whole machine, and there are reasonable doubts about its objective authenticity. To sum up, in view of the original judgment that the amount of loss of a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu was RMB 634994The determination of 22 yuan is seriously doubtful, so according to the available evidence, it cannot be determined that the amount of losses involved in the case of a machinery and equipment company in Jiangsu meets the criminal law standard of more than 500,000 yuan for trade secret crimes.
The gist of the referee. According to the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Law, the determination of the facts of the case in a criminal case must be based on evidence, and the evidence for conviction and sentencing shall be credible and sufficient, and reasonable doubt has been eliminated. In the trial of criminal cases of infringement of trade secrets, attention should be paid to reviewing the technical appraisal materials and whether they objectively and truly reflect the technical information of the right holder, and for the appraisal opinions on operating profits, attention should be paid to reviewing whether the basic financial data such as the cost and market of the relevant products are objective and accurate.
Associate indexes. Articles 236, 242 and 200 of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China (Articles 225, 231 and 195 of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China, which came into force on January 1, 2013, are applicable in this case).
First instance: Yancheng Intermediate People's Court of Jiangsu Province (2014) Yan Zhi Xing Chu Zi No. 00011 Criminal Judgment (August 19, 2015).
Second instance: Jiangsu Provincial High People's Court (2015) Su Zhi Xing Zhong Zi No. 00012 Criminal Judgment (December 30, 2016).