Medtech Engineer Admits to Stealing Trade Secrets

An engineer who formerly worked for Becton, Dickinson and Co. (BD; Franklin Lakes, NJ) and C.R. Bard Inc. (Murray Hill, NJ) has admitted to stealing trade secrets from the two global medical technology companies, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.

According to a press release from the US Attorney's Office, District of New Jersey, Ketankumar Maniar, 37, aka "Ketan Maniar," pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Joel A. Pisano in Trenton (NJ) federal court to two counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets for his own economic benefit. Maniar, an Indian national, has been in custody since his arrest on June 3, 2013.

Acting on search warrants, special agents of the FBI arrested Maniar in June at a hotel in Ramsey, NJ, disrupting his apparent plan to take the trade secrets he'd stolen back to India. The agents seized, among other things, at least one hard drive containing Bard and BD trade secrets.

Court documents say that from November 2004 until his resignation in January 2011, Maniar worked as an engineer at Bard's Salt Lake City facility and was responsible for developing molding processes and specifications for catheters, ports and other medical products. From February 2012 until his resignation on May 24, 2013, Maniar worked as a staff engineer at BD's Franklin Lakes headquarters, where he helped manufacture pre-fillable syringes and pen injectors. 

Through his work at Bard and BD, Maniar was able to steal secret information related to the companies' products, including Bard's development of the first implantable port used for power injection of pharmaceutical drugs throughout the body. Maniar also had access to secret information related to a self-administered disposable pen injector still under development by BD and not yet available for commercial sale. 

In May 2013, while still employed by BD, the FBI says that Maniar downloaded approximately 8000 files containing, among other things, highly valuable BD trade secret information related to the pen in development. The materials Maniar downloaded essentially comprised a tool kit for mass producing the pen injector.

Most of Maniar's download activity occurred during the weeks leading up to his resignation, and he also downloaded BD files from home after he had called in sick to work. He forwarded numerous files containing confidential information from his work email accounts at Bard and BD to his personal email accounts, and also copied numerous files from his work computers onto multiple storage devices, including external hard drives and thumb drives.

Each count of theft of trade secrets for personal gain is punishable by up to a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Sentencing is currently scheduled for Sept. 23, 2014.

Stephen Levy  is a contributor to Qmed and MPMN.