Cel Sci Corporation (CVM)

[rwa3848]

InVentiv Health Consulting files trade secrets suit against former employees
https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2018/06/26/now-part-of-syneos-inventiv-health-consulting.html?ana=yahoo&yptr=yahoo

InVentiv Health Consulting – now part of Syneos Health (Nasdaq: SYNH) following INC Research’s 2017 mega-merger with inVentiv Health – has filed a lawsuit in federal court against former employees, citing trade secret misappropriation and other allegations

The complaint states that while still employed at inVentiv, former managing director Alan French Jr. and a former employee of a top client co-founded at the end of 2015 a competing company: Essex, Vermont-based Equitas Life Sciences.

“During this time, French also secretly transitioned client work … from inVentiv to Equitas, and performed the work through Equitas,” the complaint states, including work for two top clients worth “several million dollars in revenue” from 2013 to 2016. “To cover his tracks and explain away corresponding declining revenues, French told his superiors at inVentiv that the clients’ need for consulting services had simply diminished.”

The complaint claims that in the first half of 2016, the bulk of French’s team members resigned from inVentiv, citing personal reasons like family, health and education, and “none told inVentiv that they planned to go work with French at Equitas.”

“That is, however, precisely what happened; the former employees left inVentiv to work for Equitas and secretly transitioned two of inVentiv’s top clients to Equitas using inVentiv’s confidential customer information,” the complaint states, adding that, “just two days before his resignation, French accessed myriad confidential documents using his inVentiv computer and inserted a thumb drive into the computer immediately afterwards, presumably so that he could take and use inVentiv’s confidential information on behalf of Equitas.”

InVentiv alleges that the “coordinated effort” violates the defendants’ employment agreements with inVentiv, along with both state and federal trade secrets and unfair competition law. According to inVentiv Health Consulting’s complaint, the company is seeking “injunctive relief to protect its trade secrets [and] damages flowing from defendants’ misconduct.”

French said in an email that, “it is Equitas’s policy not to comment on pending litigation.” Syneos also declined to comment.