Kyle Jahner, Bloomberg Law; Pfizer Says Employee Stole Files With Covid Vaccine Secrets
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Chun Xiao (Sherry) Li allegedly uploaded more than 12,000 files including “scores” of documents with confidential information to a Google Drive account, Pfizer alleged in a complaint filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. The documents are said to pertain to a broad range of topics, including analysis of vaccine studies, operational goals, and development plans for new drugs...
“Pfizer takes the safeguarding of sensitive and confidential information very seriously. Protecting that information is critical to scientific innovation, ultimately enabling us to deliver breakthroughs for patients,” a company spokesman said.
Trade secrets present a thorny issue for the debate around waiving Covid-related IP rights. Disclosure of trade secrets could aid overseas manufacturers in producing copycat versions of vaccines created by Pfizer, which has spoken out against an international waiver on intellectual property protections on Covid-19 treatments and vaccines."
