This case involves an alleged breach of an employee confidentiality agreement, with trade secrets and confidential information passed from one company to another by a senior employee. The plaintiff is a biopharmaceutical firm that focused their R&D on cancer medications. It was alleged that a high-ranking drug discovery employee for the plaintiff, who had knowledge of an important clinical success with a very high commercial value, left the company in order to join a competitor. It was further alleged that the employee brought trade secrets to his new employer, which influenced company strategy and eventually personally enriched the employee in question through the development of a similar drug.
Question(s) For Expert Witness
1. Please describe your background serving as counsel to a pharmaceutical company.
2. Do you have specific experience with vetting public disclosures from pharma companies?
Expert Witness Response E-112013
I have 25 years of relevant experience. Through most of the 1990s, I was a Vice President for the world's largest pharmaceutical marketing agency, and since 1998 I have been the head of a consulting firm that focuses on commercial, regulatory, and related aspects of the pharmaceutical industry. Over the course of my career, I have been extensively involved in virtually all aspects of the industry in the US and globally. Helping clients align financial, marketing, and regulatory strategies are major areas of business for my firm, and we have provided these services extensively for development-stage drugs as well as for generics and late-lifecycle branded drugs. I specialize in advanced valuation/market modeling and forecasting in commercial, academic, and litigation settings. The interpretation of the wording depends to a significant degree on what phase study we are speaking about: describing a Phase 1 trial as having "encouraging results" would carry much less weight than would describing the results of a pivotal trial in the same terms. Generally speaking, however, "encouraging results" would minimally imply that the investigational agent merited further investigation while "compelling results" would signify that the agent met its important endpoints with a high degree of statistical significance. "Compelling" might also connote that the trial showed superiority to current standard of care in one or more important respects. A significant portion of my consulting work is in valuation for new drugs in one form or another. The assignment most closely resembling this one would be a recently completed pre-litigation analysis for a plaintiff in a securities fraud case. Among other things, this involved demonstrating that trial results for an investigational orphan drug had been presented to the investment community as being much stronger than they actually were.
About the author
Joseph O'Neill
Joe has extensive experience in online journalism and technical writing across a range of legal topics, including personal injury, meidcal malpractice, mass torts, consumer litigation, commercial litigation, and more. Joe spent close to six years working at Expert Institute, finishing up his role here as Director of Marketing. He has considerable knowledge across an array of legal topics pertaining to expert witnesses. Currently, Joe servces as Owner and Demand Generation Consultant at LightSail Consulting.
