A district court has awarded millions in damages in an industrial espionage case involving the Meyer Turku shipyard in southwest Finland.
A man who worked at Meyer Turku until 2017 copied files from the shipyard owner and a shipping company onto his own hard drive and handed them over to a consulting firm that he owned. However, the accused died during the criminal investigation, so the court fined his estate and his company.
The District Court of Southwestern Finland ordered them to pay Meyer compensation with interest totalling five million euros as well as damages with interest of 95,000 euros. According to the court, the estate's share of reimbursement and damages is 365,000 euros.
Large number of files copied
The court declared that the perpetrator committed a copyright breach, a breach of trade secrets and corporate espionage, but since the accused is dead, he is not criminally responsible.
The court also ordered the computer and external hard drive used in committing the crimes to be handed over to the state. According to the court, a very large number of files were copied from the joint file management program of Meyer and the shipping company. According to the law, the copying focused on files that involved business and corporate secrets.
The estate and the company denied the charges. They may still appeal the ruling to the Court of Appeal.
After the verdict, Meyer Turku and its parent company, the German Meyer Werft, issued a short statement on the matter.
"The process has been difficult for all parties," it said. "In its judgment today, the district court clearly stated that our business secrets were violated in the case and that an unlawful benefit was obtained from material covered by the Copyright Act."
Users with an Yle ID can leave comments on our news stories. You can create your Yle ID via this link. Our guidelines on commenting and moderation are explained in this article. You can comment on this article until 23:00 on 17 October.