TechFlow news: According to the official blog of the Fantom Foundation, the Seoul High Court recently ruled in favor of the Fantom Foundation (defendant), dismissing all claims brought by South Korean food tech startup SikSin and its CEO Ahn Byeong-Ik (plaintiffs), and ordering the plaintiffs to bear all litigation costs. Previously, the Seoul Central District Court had ruled that Fantom pay over 198 million FTM, but that decision has now been overturned.
On July 23, 2019, Ahn Byeong-Ik and SikSin filed a lawsuit with the Seoul Central District Court, claiming they had provided technical implementation and food technology application services for the Fantom project under a service agreement. However, Fantom was unaware of the initial ruling until July 11, 2022, when it learned of the judgment and promptly filed an appeal. The appellate court accepted Fantom's appeal, finding that its lack of knowledge about the first-instance ruling was not due to any fault of its own.
The court determined that the plaintiffs failed to design a viable blockchain technology and that their technical paper involved plagiarism, nearly causing the collapse of the Fantom project. Furthermore, the plaintiffs failed to fulfill contractual obligations to integrate Fantom tokens with the food technology industry. Ultimately, the court supported Fantom’s establishment of an internal development team led by Andre Cronje and Quan Nguyen, and dismissed all claims from the plaintiffs.
