The scientist was found guilty

A former Chinese employee of the Japan State Research Design was found guilty of industrial espionage after making the organization's confidential research data available to a Chinese company.

On February 25, the district court in Tokyo sentenced the 61 -year -old Quan Hengdao to two years and six months in prison, which suspended four years and sentenced a fine with a fine of 2 million yen ($ 13,300).

The prosecutors had been looking for the same prison sentence and fine for the Chinese scientist.

According to the decision, Quan did research data from the National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in April 2018 by e -mail via E -Mail, in violation of the law on prevention of unfair competition to a Chinese company.

His wife was a great shareholder in the Chinese company.

The defense argued that the data on fluorine connection technologies did not require confidential information in accordance with the law and applied for a unclosed judgment.

However, the court dismissed this argument and found that the data contained the research results of the Aist that were not publicly available.

The court came to the conclusion that the leak made it possible for a foreign company to benefit unfairly without providing adequate compensation and thus undermining fair competition.

Simple goals

The case underlined the susceptibility of Japanese organizations for company espionage laws.

“In many Japanese companies, robust security measures are lacking and have a low urgency feeling of what they can easily do for industrial espionage,” said Kei Umebayashi, an expert in lawyers and company information.

Industrial spies often collect information by infiltrating companies or convincing employees to violate confidential data.

A survey 2020 of the Information Technology Promotion Agency (IPA) with 2,175 companies showed that around 5 percent or 113 companies experienced experienced information leaks or alleged leaks.

Of these cases, 36.3 percent were committed by former employees, while 8 percent of active employees motivated the financial profit.

A separate IPA survey that was published this month and was involved with 4,191 companies showed that about 60 percent had not invested in information security measures. Many cited the lack of clear cost efficiency for their inactivity.

Umebayashi proposed several cost-effective security steps for companies, including the ban on private email accounts at work, the physical deactivation of USB connections on corporate computers and the implementation of monitoring systems for recognizing non-authorized data transmissions.

“Information is a valuable asset,” emphasized Utibayashi. “While it is important to trust employees, companies must ensure that the necessary security practices are available.”