In China, a manager of a company led more than 50 employees to collectively resign, causing the original company to shut down. Three people have been criminally detained, and the case is currently in the prosecution stage.
According to a report from the Beijing police on April 26th, the former manager of a provincial branch of an intellectual property service company in Beijing, Zhang and others, privately established a new company with the former branch sales manager Zhu and Sheng.
The new company’s business scope and model are identical to the original company’s. It operates in patent agency, trademark agency, and other intellectual property services.
After the company was established, Zhang led all more than 50 employees of the branch to resign collectively and join the new company without informing the headquarters. They also took confidential documents from the original company. The employees continued to use the original company’s customer information, contract information, and product information to secure deals and engage in similar operations for profit, leading to the closure of the original branch.
After being certified by a professional auditing firm, it was found that Zhang and others’ new company infringed upon the original company’s trade secrets, resulting in profits of over 1.1 million yuan.
In June of last year, Zhang and the other three suspects were criminally detained on charges of infringing intellectual property and trade secrets. The case is now in the prosecution stage.
Netizens have been discussing this incident fervently:
“One employee leaving could be an internal issue, but with mass resignations, shouldn’t the boss reflect on their own conscience?”
“This manager wasn’t ethical either. For the sake of revenge, violating trade secrets and intellectual property is never encouraged.”
“Why did they take confidential documents when resigning, and with an identical business model? It’s not unjust to end up in jail.”