The Yomiuri Shimbun reported that the South Korean steelmaker POSCO has admitted to the Tokyo District Court that it obtained the confidential information of Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation.

POSCO in the statement said that it had made contact with one or more former Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal employees and obtained some of the information on the disputed technology in the past.

The company did not change its stance that the technology was developed independently and that no unauthorized use was involved. Still, the statement verifies that some type of confidential information of Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal was given to POSCO.

The technology in question is utilized in the production of grain oriented electrical steel sheets, used mainly for transformers at power plants.

The 4, who retired in the 1980s and 1990s, include a deceased former engineer who started his own company after retirement and made a licensing agreement with POSCO, and a person who became a professor of a South Korean university funded by POSCO.

The company said that in the lawsuit, filed by Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal in April 2012, which it had been keeping as a trade secret, was illegally acquired by POSCO after the South Korean company made contact with four former employees of Nippon Steel Corporation before its merger with Sumitomo Metal Industries, Limited. In the suit, Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal is claiming damages from POSCO and one of its former employees.