Beginning in 2016, SK Innovation begins hiring dozens of LG Chem engineers and critical business services staff. An internal audit revealed some of these employees downloaded 400 to 1,900 key technical documents from LG Chem’s data servers before their move to SK.
SK Innovation’s aggregated amount of EV battery supply in contract increased by more than 14 times between 2016, when it began misappropriating LG Chem’s trade secrets, and 2019, when it announced plans to build a major manufacturing plant in Georgia.
In April 2019, LG Chem filed a pair of federal lawsuits alleging SKI’s trade secret misappropriation. The very next day, one SKI executive emailed staff: "Delete every material related to the rival company from every single individual's PC, mail storage archives and team rooms. ASAP. ... Delete this email after completing this direction."