SOURCE: Reuters

Pfiz­er Inc (PFE.N) has sued a long-time em­ploy­ee for al­leged­ly steal­ing "scores" of con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing some re­lat­ed to its COVID-19 vac­cine, as she pre­pared to jump to a com­peti­tor.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­port from REUTERS news agency, Pfiz­er filed a com­plaint on Tues­day No­vem­ber 23rd, in a San Diego fed­er­al court, in which it claimed:

“Chun Xi­ao Li breached her con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment by up­load­ing more than 12,000 files with­out per­mis­sion to her per­son­al ac­counts and de­vices from her com­pa­ny-is­sued lap­top.”

“The al­leged ma­te­ri­als in­clude a Sep­tem­ber 24th "play­book" con­tain­ing in­ter­nal as­sess­ments and rec­om­men­da­tions about the Pfiz­er/BioN­Tech (22UAy.DE) COVID-19 vac­cine, Pfiz­er's re­la­tion­ship with its Ger­man vac­cine part­ner, and pre­sen­ta­tions re­lat­ed to can­cer an­ti­bod­ies,” the re­port from REUTERS said.

Pfiz­er told the court that Li, an as­so­ciate di­rec­tor of sta­tis­tics, “tried re­peat­ed­ly to cov­er her tracks, even pro­vid­ing a ‘de­coy’ lap­top to fool it in­to think­ing what she did with the files.”

“Li has mis­led Pfiz­er about what she took, how she took it, when and why she did it, and where those files (and pos­si­bly oth­ers) can be found,” the REUTERS re­port quotes the com­pa­ny.

Li re­port­ed­ly is re­sign­ing af­ter 15 years at Pfiz­er.  The com­pa­ny says she ap­pears “to have an of­fer to join Xen­cor Inc (XN­CR.O), a Cal­i­for­nia clin­i­cal-stage com­pa­ny fo­cus­ing on treat­ments for can­cer and au­toim­mune dis­eases, on No­vem­ber 29th.”

REUTERS notes that Li could not im­me­di­ate­ly be reached for com­ment through her LinkedIn ac­count, and that Xen­cor is not a de­fen­dant in the law­suit and de­clined to com­ment.

With re­gard to its em­ploy­ees, the news sto­ry quotes Pfiz­er as say­ing com­peti­tors have been “re­lent­less” in their at­tempts to re­cruit its em­ploy­ees, "es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing 2021."

The REUTERS sto­ry con­firmed that U.S. Dis­trict Judge Cathy Ann Ben­civen­go is­sued an or­der late on Tues­day, tem­porar­i­ly block­ing Li from us­ing Pfiz­er's trade se­crets.  The judge said the com­pa­ny's lawyers can re­view ac­counts and de­vices where she might have stored them.

The judge sched­uled a hear­ing for De­cem­ber 9th, to con­sid­er a longer in­junc­tion.

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Sto­ry by JONATHAN STEM­PEL, Reuters