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Post by porkini on Aug 19, 2024 21:54:27 GMT -5
Let's not forget '793 with the Supreme Court. There is also another pesky lawsuit out there regarding trade secret misappropriation. Liquidia is still driving on a very bumpy road. I am curious about how the Supreme Court request will go. The trade secret case is not a serious threat, filing that case was pretty standard practice. You can almost always find an ex-employee in possession of something somewhere. I would hazard that in this case it is not so much finding the ex-employee as it is the level of the ex-employee.
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Post by cppoly on Aug 21, 2024 6:19:45 GMT -5
UTHR has an unimpeded runway for at least a year and by extension so does MNKD. 9 months minimum + first 3 months having negligible impact. Add in TETON 1 and 2 progress / completion. I wonder if this new runway makes it almost impossible for LQDA to siphon off any meaningful numbers from T-DPI with UTHR running at full steam in 1 year from now.
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Post by ktim on Aug 21, 2024 14:06:40 GMT -5
This seems a better outcome than was expected for UTHR, and the stock price does reflect a nice increase over where it was trading in July before the drop in Aug (likely anticipating the expected news of LQDA entering the market now). However, the analyst estimates for 2025 earnings for UTHR isn't yet reflecting much. Were the analysts already pricing in only limited LQDA success, or are they now thinking this delay doesn't contribute to meaningful market share protection for 2025... or are they still in process of updating models with estimate adjustments yet to come? Place your bets... $5.32 table ante.
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Post by agedhippie on Aug 21, 2024 17:12:08 GMT -5
I am curious about how the Supreme Court request will go. The trade secret case is not a serious threat, filing that case was pretty standard practice. You can almost always find an ex-employee in possession of something somewhere. Wasn't the original filing accusing Liquidia of submitting the stolen blueprints to the FDA that United literally submitted to get FDA approval ? Seems kind of serious to me. I would have to refresh my memory on court documents.
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No, nothing like that. There is no evidence that LQDA ever used any of the information (the court makes note of that, and UTHR dropped the conversion claim) the issue is purely that Roscigno was in possession of the documents while employed by LQDA. Having been on the clean up side of these cases before it usually turns out that the person copied their email when they left the company and the documents were attachments. Along comes the patent case and UTHR does discovery, basically a keyword search across everything, and gets a hit on the documents. The documents get shipped out with several hundreds to thousands of others. If these documents had actually been used used they would be known and the lawyers would have produced a reason to exclude them from the discovery - they would have remained hidden. This is why these cases are so seldom worth the effort other than for intimidation. Almost invariably the exposure turns out to have been stupidity rather than malice in my experience. The worst that would happen to LQDA is some monetary damages that will probably barely cover costs.
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Post by jkendra on Aug 22, 2024 7:40:53 GMT -5
Wasn't the original filing accusing Liquidia of submitting the stolen blueprints to the FDA that United literally submitted to get FDA approval ? Seems kind of serious to me. I would have to refresh my memory on court documents.
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No, nothing like that. There is no evidence that LQDA ever used any of the information (the court makes note of that, and UTHR dropped the conversion claim) the issue is purely that Roscigno was in possession of the documents while employed by LQDA. Having been on the clean up side of these cases before it usually turns out that the person copied their email when they left the company and the documents were attachments. Along comes the patent case and UTHR does discovery, basically a keyword search across everything, and gets a hit on the documents. The documents get shipped out with several hundreds to thousands of others. If these documents had actually been used used they would be known and the lawyers would have produced a reason to exclude them from the discovery - they would have remained hidden. This is why these cases are so seldom worth the effort other than for intimidation. Almost invariably the exposure turns out to have been stupidity rather than malice in my experience. The worst that would happen to LQDA is some monetary damages that will probably barely cover costs. Conversion claim was dropped in May 2022. www.nccourts.gov/assets/documents/opinions/2024%20NCBC%2047.pdfIn May 2024 United Therapeutics filed another complaint. liquidia.com/static-files/2ccbfb9e-4189-4cce-ab56-f4906c0246d4In May 2024, United Therapeutics filed a second complaint in the Superior Court in Durham County, North Carolina, against Dr. Roscigno, alleging that he breached prior employment agreements with United Therapeutics by failing to assign to United Therapeutics his interest in patents obtained by the Company that relied upon or benefitted from certain inventions, discoveries, materials, authorship, derivatives and results developed by Dr. Roscigno while he was employed by United Therapeutics. The Company was also named as a defendant in this new lawsuit. As part of the lawsuit, United Therapeutics alleges that Dr. Roscigno misappropriated certain intellectual property of United Therapeutics which led to the development of YUTREPIA. The complaint also seeks declaratory judgement such that all right, title and interest in and to any patentable or unpatentable inventions, discoveries, and ideas made or conceived by Dr. Roscigno while employed by the company should be assigned and transferred to United Therapeutics because they involved the use of United Therapeutics’ confidential information. The Company intends to vigorously defend itself against these allegations.
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Post by prcgorman2 on Aug 22, 2024 8:00:55 GMT -5
Looks like a lovely chewy job for e-discovery and many billable hours by competent paralegals (trained in drug research and development?) to search for electronic evidence in e-mails, IMs, documents, presentations, drawings, charts, graphs, computational and laboratory results, meeting titles, agendas, recordings, and notes, etc. If there is a trail, the hound dogs can find it.
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Post by thekid2499 on Aug 22, 2024 8:19:05 GMT -5
I'm a complex commercial litigator and I have worked on a number of theft of trade secret and unlawful use of confidential information cases. Aged Hippie, your view is not accurate. Most folks know exactly what they are doing when they take confidential company information (whether trade secrets, sensitive business information, client lists, etc...). These are typically very smart people with future business ideas and are looking to succeed in whatever they do next. There's a reason they take the information and it's not because they are idiots. So there typically is some type of real case. The legal question is typically did they use that information and did it actually harm their prior company.
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Post by ktim on Aug 22, 2024 12:11:07 GMT -5
Looks like a lovely chewy job for e-discovery and many billable hours by competent paralegals (trained in drug research and development?) to search for electronic evidence in e-mails, IMs, documents, presentations, drawings, charts, graphs, computational and laboratory results, meeting titles, agendas, recordings, and notes, etc. If there is a trail, the hound dogs can find it. And perhaps AI e-discovery.
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Post by agedhippie on Aug 22, 2024 12:36:55 GMT -5
I'm a complex commercial litigator and I have worked on a number of theft of trade secret and unlawful use of confidential information cases. Aged Hippie, your view is not accurate. Most folks know exactly what they are doing when they take confidential company information (whether trade secrets, sensitive business information, client lists, etc...). These are typically very smart people with future business ideas and are looking to succeed in whatever they do next. There's a reason they take the information and it's not because they are idiots. So there typically is some type of real case. The legal question is typically did they use that information and did it actually harm their prior company. I only deal with these from time to time on the clean up rather than legal side so your view is going to be far more accurate than mine. My original hypothesis was that this was related to emails, but it appears that they were on old thumb drives which makes arguing they were not deliberately copied a lot harder. On the other hand he left in 2007 which was prior to the launch of nebulized Tyvaso, rather than anything to do with LQDA's product which was always DPI. He joined LQDA in 2015. By then LQDA had already developed Yutrepia (they had licensed their DPI technology to GSK with an exception for Yutrepia in 2015) so it's hard to see how anything he can have done was relevant. This was the rejection of the move for summary dismissal and contains some interesting details. nclawyersweekly.com/2024/08/05/contract-confidentiality-provision-trade-secret-misappropriation/
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Post by agedhippie on Aug 22, 2024 12:45:52 GMT -5
UTHR voluntarily dismissed, without prejudice, the complaint it had filed against the FDA so the FDA case is over for now. On the other hand LQDA is challenging the exclusivity period the FDA gave UTHR (Case No. 1:24-cv-02428). I am not really sure why LQDA did this since there is a strong chance that the exclusivity period expires before this is decided - I think it's theatre.
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Post by thekid2499 on Aug 22, 2024 21:11:00 GMT -5
I'm a complex commercial litigator and I have worked on a number of theft of trade secret and unlawful use of confidential information cases. Aged Hippie, your view is not accurate. Most folks know exactly what they are doing when they take confidential company information (whether trade secrets, sensitive business information, client lists, etc...). These are typically very smart people with future business ideas and are looking to succeed in whatever they do next. There's a reason they take the information and it's not because they are idiots. So there typically is some type of real case. The legal question is typically did they use that information and did it actually harm their prior company. I only deal with these from time to time on the clean up rather than legal side so your view is going to be far more accurate than mine. My original hypothesis was that this was related to emails, but it appears that they were on old thumb drives which makes arguing they were not deliberately copied a lot harder. On the other hand he left in 2007 which was prior to the launch of nebulized Tyvaso, rather than anything to do with LQDA's product which was always DPI. He joined LQDA in 2015. By then LQDA had already developed Yutrepia (they had licensed their DPI technology to GSK with an exception for Yutrepia in 2015) so it's hard to see how anything he can have done was relevant. This was the rejection of the move for summary dismissal and contains some interesting details. nclawyersweekly.com/2024/08/05/contract-confidentiality-provision-trade-secret-misappropriation/Yes the case was not dismissed on summary judgement and is moving forward. Key takeaways from what you linked below. Discovery will be needed - he could have been working behind the scenes much earlier than 2015 when he joined. Who knows? Regardless, as of August, the case was still ongoing and it is clearly not frivolous. The intent of the parties with respect to whether Roscigno was required to continue to protect trade secret information even though his obligation to protect “Confidential Information” as defined in the 2007 Agreement expired three years after termination is unclear. It is not clear that they intended for his confidentiality obligation with respect to trade secret information to expire three years after his employment ended. When an agreement is ambiguous, and the intention of the parties is unclear, interpretation of the contract is for the jury to decide whether the parties intended for trade secret protection to expire three years after the termination of Roscigno’s employment. Finally, Roscigno argued he is entitled to summary judgment with respect to UTC’s misappropriation claim because, under the North Carolina Trade Secrets Protection Act, a plaintiff may only recover actual damages that were caused by misappropriation. Even if the 2007 Agreement implicitly permitted Roscigno to disclose UTC’s trade secrets three years after termination of his employment—which itself is an issue for the jury—UTC presented evidence to support its position that he never should have taken the documents containing trade secrets in the first place. By statute, trade secret misappropriation is defined to include the unlawful acquisition of a trade secret, as well as its disclosure. Therefore, a jury could conclude that misappropriation occurred, and UTC was damaged as early as 2007, when Roscigno left its employ with company information stored on a flash drive in violation of its policy.
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Post by uvula on Sept 3, 2024 14:55:28 GMT -5
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Post by prcgorman2 on Sept 3, 2024 15:45:15 GMT -5
In a few years they may have something to sell.
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Post by uvula on Sept 17, 2024 7:45:38 GMT -5
See LQDA thread for press release that is a "MNKD-related UTHR topic".
(Posted link in this thread but it was deleted.)
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