An AI transformed company materials into a new checklist. Is that information stolen property?

The source file remains, and a summary easier to use has appeared outside

In 2032, assume that A, who works at hypothetical packaging equipment company Q, has Work-related authority to read the company's internal inspection data. There is no permission to retain the data for personal use or to transmit it to the outside. Assume that A, for the purpose of using it in A's own business, caused the company's AI to create a digital inspection checklist newly organizing that data, and intentionally directed that the result be copied into A's own personal storage space. The identity of the instructor and the circumstances of the act are not disputed, so the issue in this case is not to whom the AI's autonomous conduct should be attributed.

This checklist is not a result that the company had created in advance and stored for its regular Work. It is a file newly generated in accordance with A's purpose of personal removal. It is, however, set as an assumption that the core information within it came from non-public materials managed by the company. The AI changed the sentences and the arrangement, and it is likewise an acknowledged assumption that the new checklist is easier to read and use than the source text. This is not an introduction stating that a particular product actually provides such functions.

The company's original data was neither erased nor locked, and the company can continue to view and use it as before. There is no fact that computers, storage devices, or paper documents were taken away. Here it is set that the prosecution indicted A for theft on the sole fact of taking the company's useful information. It is not a case in which the stealing of storage devices, electricity, or paper was included in the facts charged in the indictment.

The company asserts that the secret went outside and that its competitive value was impaired. Do the question of whether A's conduct may be permitted and the question of whether the subject of these facts charged is what theft terms a chattel require the same answer? This pair focuses on distinguishing the two questions.

In the actual precedent, two sheets of design drawings left the research and development room

The facts charged in the indictment of Supreme Court Decision 2002Do745 decided July 12, 2002 include the event in which a company employee, at the request of another defendant, printed out on two sheets of A2 paper the design drawings of a fabric base material rubber coating system stored on a laptop in the research and development room on October 14, 2000, and took them away. This is not a Case summarized by AI; it was a Case in which information on a screen was newly printed onto paper.

The court below found that the company had provided the laptop for Work use, that the employee had produced the design materials for company Work, that the independently developed system was not known outside, possessed economic value, and was managed as a secret. On the basis of such circumstances, it treated the printed design drawings as another's chattel and upheld the guilty finding. The company's effort and economic value were circumstances that actually entered the determination.

The Supreme Court read the subject of the facts charged in two branches. If it means that information stored in the computer itself was stolen, the information is neither a movable thing nor energy possessing physical properties, and therefore is not a chattel in theft. The explanation was that copying and printing alone do not diminish the information itself or the victim's possession or the possibility of use, and therefore it cannot be regarded as constituting theft.

Even reading it as meaning the taking of the design drawings newly printed on paper, the Supreme Court did not accept the conclusion of the court below. It distinguished that printout as a document not created for company Work and kept by the company, but a document newly made by the defendant for the purpose of taking it away. The Supreme Court added that the facts charged do not appear to have prosecuted the stealing of the paper itself. This is not a determination that unauthorized use of company paper never gives rise to liability.

The reasons of the Supreme Court stated that a not guilty verdict should have been pronounced as to these facts charged. The actual disposition, however, was reversal of the judgment of the court below and remand to the collegiate panel of the main court of Suwon District Court. This writing has not verified the outcome after remand. It reads separately the not-guilty-import of the reasons stated in the judgment and the actual procedural disposition.

Sources for this section: Supreme Court Decision 2002Do745 decided July 12, 2002 — Theft

The determination proposed in this hypothetical case

Mock determination for research purposes: on the charged facts of theft, which, as described above, concern only the removal of the information itself, the determination is framed as an acquittal of A. This is neither the outcome of an actual trial nor a determination that all of A's conduct was lawful. It is a limited conclusion reached on the research premise that the provisions checked on September 30, 2026 and the analytical framework of the precedent above apply as they stand.

Article 329 of the Criminal Act, as checked, punishes the theft of another person's property, and Article 346 deems manageable energy to be property for the purposes of the crimes in that Chapter. Both provisions were checked in the version partially amended by Act No. 22007 of September 29, 2026, in force from October 2, 2026. The 2032 setting does not imply a definitive prediction of future legislation.

The mock determination does not rest on the view that the new checklist has no value. Even accepting the assumption that the company's core information was contained in a digital file and copied, economic usefulness alone does not lead to the conclusion that the information constitutes property for the purposes of theft. Nor does the fact that the AI summarised or rearranged the content to make it easier to use allow this question under the constituent elements to be bypassed.

In this part, the correspondence between the actual precedent and the hypothetical case concerns the determination regarding information itself. The 2002 determination concerning paper printouts is not relied on to argue that copyright, or civil ownership or rights of use, in the AI summary file belong to A. Even though the scenario specifies who created the file and for what purpose, that fact alone cannot resolve the attribution of all rights.

Sources for this section: Supreme Court Decision 2002Do745 decided July 12, 2002 — Theft · Criminal Act Article 329 — Theft · Criminal Act Article 346 — Energy

If the exclusive value has diminished, has the possibility of use not also diminished?

The company side's strongest Counterarguments is that the fact that the original can still be opened alone cannot explain the loss. If an outsider who found the source material difficult to read became able to make ready use of it through the AI's summary, the advantage of knowledge that only the company knew and used may be greatly reduced. It raises the issue that the new checklist may cause greater harm than a simple file copy. This paragraph constructs a hypothetical company assertion, and does not mean that there was actually such AI or such use results in the 2002 Case.

This counterargument is meaningful in asking about the substance of the harm, but one must explain anew by which requirements of which law that harm is to be evaluated. In the actual precedent as well, the economic value of the information and its secret management were facts found by the court below. The Supreme Court did not regard that fact alone as satisfying the chattel requirement of theft. The mock determination distinguishes the continuation of access to and use of the original from the loss of the information's secrecy and competitive advantage.

Accordingly, the assertion that replication causes no harm is also not the conclusion of this pair. Whether other issues such as trade secrets, duties arising from Work, contracts, and copyright are established must be separately reviewed under the respective requirements and facts. This writing neither recognizes nor excludes liability under those laws. A determination that certain requirements of theft are not met cannot be read as turning into permission for external transmission.

Sources for this section: Supreme Court Decision 2002Do745 decided July 12, 2002 — Theft

Where the same content is contained but the object taken differs

Let us change one assumption. If the company had the AI create a report as regular Work and printed and kept it on paper, and A took that very document kept by the company, what then? The subject of review then includes not only information but also the object of the already existing document and the company's possession. The argument denying the chattel requirement on the ground that only digital information was copied, as in the original hypothetical case, cannot be used as it stands.

In this alternative case, however, it is not immediately confirmed that all requirements of theft are satisfied. Concrete facts such as the object actually taken, the transfer of possession, permission for removal, and the actor's recognition must be judged separately. It is a comparison that utilizes the point that the 2002 judgment distinguished documents kept by the company from documents newly printed for the purpose of personal removal, and it does not propose a new legal principle that a document is always company-owned if made by an AI.

Conversely, if one adds only the fact that the digital summary file was first created as the company's regular Work and no physical document or device was taken, one may review in the direction that the fact of being a result produced for company Work does not transform the information itself into a chattel in theft. In this case, the question of the permission of use between the company and A may become clearer, but violation of authority and chattel character must not be handled as a single item.

Sources for this section: Supreme Court Decision 2002Do745 decided July 12, 2002 — Theft · Criminal Act Article 329 — Theft

What is to be specified before new expression

The Records needed for the comparison in this research are not a scoring table evaluating how originally the AI wrote. One must first specify whether the subject of the facts charged is information, an existing paper document, a storage device, or paper. The fact that the name of the same equipment appears in the materials does not make the subject the same.

Next, one must connect which output was created when and for what Work, who kept it, and what was actually moved. The input materials, the generated result, the original kept by the company, the object moved, and the object remaining are different items. Here all are synthetic settings, and no actual company logs or personal information were used.

Nor can one assume from the summary result alone that the AI decided by itself. This pair presupposed A's intentional instruction and the circumstances of execution. In Cases where materials show that there was no instruction or that the system performed a different operation, separate questions concerning the actor and intent open up. This writing does not cover even those unverified questions with the same mock conclusion.

Does a tool that increases the usefulness of information also change the nature of the object?

When AI turns the source text into knowledge that is easy to read, the task of explaining what was leaked may become more difficult. Even where the degree of sentence matching is low, important information may have been conveyed, and even where the content is nearly the same, the object moved may be a paper document or digital information. Separating the difference between these two directions is the proposal of this research pair.

The 2002 judgment did not resolve the attribution of rights in AI outputs or all infringements of information. The question taken from that judgment is not to stop at whether there is economic value, but first to clarify what the subject of the offense in question is. The 2032 hypothetical case also answered only within that scope. Between the explanation that new tools change the aspect of harm and the explanation that the existing constituent elements are satisfied, further argument is still required.

Sources for this section: Supreme Court Decision 2002Do745 decided July 12, 2002 — Theft