Short answer. Yes. Article 292 of the Revised Penal Code makes it a crime for the person in charge, an employee or a workman of a manufacturing or industrial establishment to reveal the secrets of that industry to the prejudice of the owner. A pure outsider is not covered by this particular article.
What the law says
shall be imposed upon the person in charge, employee or workman of any manufacturing or industrial establishment who, to the prejudice of the owner thereof, shall reveal the secrets of the industry of the latter
Revised Penal Code, Article 292 — Revealing Industrial Secrets. Read the full provision →
Who can commit this offence
The article is narrow on purpose. It reaches only three kinds of people: the person in charge of a manufacturing or industrial establishment, an employee, and a workman. The wrongdoing is an abuse of a position of trust inside the plant. A competitor who bribes his way to a formula, a consultant engaged under a service contract, or a stranger who hacks a server does not fit the description in this article, however damaging what they did. That does not mean they walk away — other criminal statutes, the intellectual property law, and ordinary civil actions for damages may still reach them. It simply means Article 292 is not the provision that applies.
What counts as a secret, and what prejudice means
The article speaks of the secrets of the industry of the owner. That points to information genuinely kept confidential and connected to how the establishment manufactures or produces — a formula, a process, a technique, a source or a specification. Information already published, obvious to anyone in the trade, or freely shown to visitors is not a secret in any real sense. The article also requires that the revelation be made to the prejudice of the owner. A disclosure that causes the owner no harm at all is a weak foundation for a criminal charge, so employers who intend to complain should be ready to show concretely what the leak cost them: lost orders, a copied product, an undercut price.
The penalty, and why the peso figure matters
The punishment is imprisonment in the form of prisión correccional in its minimum and medium periods, together with a fine that today may not exceed one hundred thousand pesos. That ceiling is the figure fixed by Republic Act No. 10951 (2017), which revised the fines and property values across the Revised Penal Code. This matters practically: many free reproductions of the Code still circulate with the original 1930 amounts, which are far lower and no longer the law. If a website, reviewer or memorandum quotes you a different fine for this article, check whether it predates Republic Act No. 10951 before relying on it.
If you are the employer, or the employee accused
Criminal liability is only one track. An employer whose process has leaked usually cares more about stopping the use of the information and recovering losses, which are civil and sometimes labour questions running alongside any complaint. Confidentiality clauses, exit clearances and evidence of what the employee actually accessed carry real weight. If you are the one accused, the important questions are whether the information was truly secret, whether you fell within the three categories the article names, and whether the owner suffered prejudice. No outcome can be promised in either direction; the strength of a case here turns almost entirely on documents. Gather them before anyone files anything.