11 arrested in Korea over AMOLED technology leak from Samsung to "local rival"

The Korean police announced today that they are investigating a case of key technology leaking from Samsung Mobile Display to a local rival firm. This technology is Samsung's Small Mask Scanning, used to produce AMOLED on large substrates. The local rival may be LG Display (Samsung's biggest AMOLED competitor) but this is strange as they are using a completely different front plane architecture (WOLED-CF) in their own large panel production and this technology does not require fine patterning.

11 people were arrested in the case - former and current researchers at SMD and employees of the rival firm. The main suspect is a 46 years old former researcher at SMD who now works at the rival company. The police suspects he received 190 million Won (about $168,000) for the secret data. He is also suspect of sharing the information with a Chinese display maker.

Hopefully we'll get more information soon, when the Korean police can reveal more details.

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Posted: Apr 05,2012 by Ron Mertens

Comments

That tells you something about the state of the justice system in that country. This should after all clearly be a civil case, not a criminal one.