A Shanghai court has found a Chinese scientist guilty of stealing and selling medical compounds from pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co., according to court documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal:
The court sentenced him to the equivalent of 18 months probation and ordered him to pay around $7,000 in restitution. In its decision, the Shanghai court gave the former PharmaTech employee’s name only as Mr. Wang; a person familiar with the matter said the man’s full name is Wang Hui.
News of an alleged theft at a leading Chinese scientific research firm comes as the pharmaceutical industry increasingly looks to the world’s most populous nation to help lower its high drug-development costs. A major hurdle, analysts say, is lax protection in China of intellectual property secrets.
See also CDT coverage of a U.S. Justice Department investigation into corporate espionage involving a California couple, a Sichuan-based company and U.S. chemical company Dupont.
