Dive Brief:
- Johnson & Johnson’s robotic surgery unit has accused some former employees of “shameless, systematic and ongoing misappropriation of trade secrets.”
- In a lawsuit filed Dec. 12 in U.S. district court, three J&J subsidiaries claim executives and engineers at robotic surgery startup Noah Medical, including CEO and founder Jian Zhang, have documents from their time working at Auris Health.
- Auris and two other J&J subsidiaries, Verb Surgical and Cilag GmbH International, have asked the court to require the return of trade secrets and the payment of damages by Noah.
Dive Insight:
The lawsuit accuses Noah of engaging “in a systematic process of hiring other Auris employees that has maximized [its] ability to obtain Auris trade secrets.” According to the plaintiffs, Zhang, Auris’ second employee, still has documents from his time at the J&J company and runs a business that is built on the work of others.
Much of the lawsuit centers on Enrique Romo, who became vice president of research and innovation at Noah after working on early-stage innovations for Auris’ robotic platforms. Romo allegedly took “a treasure trove” of materials from Auris, including “a presentation depicting an endoscopic system developed by his team at Auris that bears a striking similarity to the subject of Noah’s patent application.” The lawsuit claims “a Noah patent application includes stolen Auris trade secrets.”
Since mid-2020, Romo has allegedly led a recruiting drive that has hired “at least sixteen Auris engineers at all levels of seniority who either affirmatively misappropriated or — at best — retained Plaintiffs’ property when they departed.”
According to the lawsuit, Romo and two other Noah employees “collectively stole at least 26,000 Auris, Verb and Cilag documents comprising 81 gigabytes of data.” The data reportedly includes source code, designs and test cases that are “directly relevant to the individual defendants’ work at Noah.”
Noah Medical did not immediately respond to Medtech Dive’s request for comment.
