TechFlow reported that according to the official blog of Fantom Foundation, the Seoul High Court recently ruled in favor of Fantom Foundation (defendant), dismissed all claims of Korean food technology startup SikSin and its CEO Ahn Byeong-Ik (plaintiff), and required the plaintiff to bear all litigation costs. Previously, the Seoul Central District Court had ordered Fantom to pay more than 198 million FTM, but the ruling has now been overturned.
On July 23, 2019, Ahn Byeong-Ik and SikSin sued Fantom in the Seoul Central District Court, claiming that they provided technical implementation and food technology application services for the Fantom project under the service agreement. However, Fantom was not aware of the first instance judgment until July 11, 2022, when it learned of the judgment and filed an appeal. The Court of Appeal found that Fantom's appeal was valid because it was not its own fault that it was unaware of the first instance judgment.
The court found that the plaintiff failed to design a viable blockchain technology and that its technical papers contained plagiarism, which nearly led to the collapse of the Fantom project. In addition, the plaintiff failed to fulfill its contractual obligations to integrate Fantom coin 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 of the plaintiff's claims.
