Dismissal justified when employee breaches fiduciary duties and confidentiality by promoting competitor's products, undermining employer-employee trust.

Reference

[1] This is a reference made under s 20(3) of the Industrial Relations Act 1967 ("the Act") to the Industrial Court dated 18 February 2022 with respect to a complaint of dismissal of YAP SIEW DEEN ("the claimant") by M3 TECHNOLOGIES (ASIA) BERHAD ("the company") on 6 September 2021.

Introduction

The Company

[2] The Company is a public listed company in Malaysia, and is now known as XOX Technology Berhad. M3 Online Sdn Bhd is a private limited company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Company ("M3 Online") which carries on the same business as the Company. Both the Company and M3 Online shall collectively be referred to as the "M3 Group". The M3 Group is involved in providing mobile solutions and platforms including multimedia products, wireless application protocol ("WAP") and Java 2 Micro Edition ("J2ME") applications catering to the business-to-consumer ("B2C"), business-to- business ("B2B") and business-to-owner ("B2O") channels. M3 Group has developed their products since 1999, and over more than 2 decades of development and operations, have invested substantial fund to develop and promote their various products.

[3] The products of the M3 Group are, amongst others, ("M3 Products"):

a. M3 Blast which is a marketing application delivering short messaging service for companies to reach their target clients and business partners directly;

b. i3TeamWorks which is a mobile-friendly, cloud-based business management system with GPS tracking capability catered for organisations to improve their productivity and efficiency, designed to run on all devices including desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones with seamless access anytime and anywhere;

c. i3Display which is an intelligent digital display solution which integrates analytics, creative software and business applications to deliver engaging data-driven experiences. More than just a display unit, the i3Display also carries camera functions and capabilities, interactive applications and top up and reload of credit solutions capacity; and

d. i3AppsBuilder which allows businesses to create and customize cost effective mobile applications for their business to be published on Google Play and Apple App Store without the need for any coding know- how; and

e. EZVIZ which provides video surveillance equipment, focused on easy- to-use and set-up security cameras and video equipment including security cameras, alarm systems and action cameras.

[4] The software products and the software subsisting and/or underlying the above products shall be referred to collectively as the "M3 Software Products", and the copyright for such M3 Software Products including their source codes and system architecture belongs to M3 Group at all material times. Some of the major partners and clients of the M3 Group include, inter alia, Affin Bank, Agro Bank, Air Selangor, Grand Hyatt KL, KRU Entertainment, and many more. [see: COWS-1, Q&A 10].

[5] The Company also state that the following are confidential and proprietary information belonging to the M3 Group, such as:

a. business arrangements with clients;

b. the M3 Software Products;

c. the source codes and system architecture for the M3 Software Products;

d. details of the M3 Group's clients and business partners, whether actual, potential or past and their software requirements;

e. dat