This is a translation of the sentence of Korean legal
case involving GPL, ElimNet vs. HaionNet, 2005GODAN2806.

I am not a lawyer. I am not a native speaker of English.
GNU Korea published the full sentence transcribed in Korean
as well as in scanned form on the web at:
http://korea.gnu.org/gv/sentence.html

Seo Sanghyeon

----

(snip)

Defendant Han claims that Etun is a derived work of Vtun
licensed under so-called GPL, and moreover most of it was
developed at Inroots where Han worked before employed by
ElimNet, therefore it doesn't qualify as trade secret of
ElimNet.

Considering that competitive advantage is enough requisite
to be trade secret, which doesn't need to be innovative unlike
patent, moreover the reason to forbid breaching of trade secret
is to prevent breachers to gain unfair advantages against
fair competitors by act of breaching (Supreme Court 1998),
according to evidences mentioned above, following facts are
recognized:

1. Etun is a VPN software mainly developed by defendant
Han together with Park, Koo, Yu under the employment of
ElimNet from Sep 2003 to Mar 2004 based on the public
software Vtun which improves network transfer speed by
implementing channel bonding,

2. Defendant Han accepted a suggestion by Defendant Park
of HaionNet to participate in the VPN business on Oct
2004 and as per request of Park handed VTUN.HL which adds
some improvement of Etun over to him on Nov 2004,

3. Then defendant Han resigned from ElimNet without
transfering the source code of Etun to the company while
keeping the copy personally and by the request of defendant
Park fixed some bug of Etun and named it HAI, and Park
started the commercial service using HAI from Jan 2005,

4. While ElimNet and HaionNet are only companies providing
VPN service based on Vtun code in Korea, and HaionNet's HAI
and ElimNet's Etun shares much of its source code, HaionNet
dishonestly advertised on its homepage and at business
promotion HAI to be an innovative technology developed
Jun 2004 on its own,

5. In VPN business, software like Etun is a core software
which is usually kept secret from outside (defendant Han's
statement), while what Han claims to have developed at
Inroots before employed by ElimNet is uncertain as well as
unproved, and even if we are to accept the claim this old
Etun wasn't put to commercial use, while ElimNet's Etun
was, with some modifications,

Considering these facts, Etun, which defendant Han and
Park appropriated, while based on the public software Vtun,
not only had improvement and betterment by ElimNet, but
also was technological information kept and maintained
secret and not widely known to the public, therefore
qualifies as trade secret with its own commercial value,
while GPL license of Free Software Foundation promoting
so-called Open Source Movement has no legal relevance
concerning this case, therefore defendants' claim is without
ground.

(snip)

On the weighing of offense

Defendants commited crime by appropriating ElimNet's
technological and business trade secrets and using them
for latecommer HaionNet's VPN business thereby threatening
ElimNet's viability, while pleaing for so-called Free
Software Foundation to put pressure on the trial,
therefore should be put to severe punishment. Especially
defendant Han's nature of offense is bad in that he
appropriated core trade secrets and denied crime altogether,
so he shall be arrested. (rest snip)

Judge Chang