Former Lilly Employees Charged With Stealing R&D Secrets

Did three former Eli Lilly employees secretly swipe confidential information and convey this to a Chinese drugmaker? This is the allegation that was debated in a federal court yesterday, where federal prosecutors accused Guoqing Cao, Shuyu Li and an unnamed individual of being traitors, according to the Indianapolis Business Journal. An indictment charged that Cao and Li, both of whom are biologists with doctoral degrees, with seven counts of theft and conspiracy to commitment theft. They allegedly e-mailed sensitive information about nine experimental Lilly drugs to the unnamed person who is employed by Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine, which is based in China. Lilly valued the confidential data at $55 million, the paper writes. And three years ago, Cao sought a job with the Chinese drugmaker and traveled to China, where he met with company officials at the time, according to the indictment (here is the indictment). At a hearing yesterday, Assistant US Attorney Cynthia Ridgeway told a judge that “if the superseding indictment in this case could be wrapped up in one word, that word would be ‘traitor.’ Cao and Li, who were arrested last week, appeared in handcuffs and striped jail uniforms. The US Attorney argued that both men are flight risks and pose a “financial danger” to Lilly. Bill Heath, who heads global product development at Lilly, testified that their knowledge could help Hengrui duplicate Lilly (LLY) research, the paper writes. The data pertains to drugs being tes...
Source: Pharmalot - Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs