Johnson & Johnson is suing a former Philly-area employee, saying he took trade secrets to Pfizer
The suit also alleges the employee violated his noncompete agreement when he took a job at Pfizer that is similar to the one he had at J&J.
Pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson is suing a former employee from Doylestown that it alleges stole more than 1,000 confidential documents when he left for a similar job at competitor drugmaker Pfizer.
The allegedly stolen documents outline business, pricing, and market strategies related to J&J drugs that compete with Pfizer products, according to the lawsuit filed last week in New Jersey federal court.
The lawsuit highlights the significance of trade secrets and employee confidentiality in the competitive pharmaceutical and life sciences industry, according to the health news website STAT, which first covered the J&J lawsuit last week. Pfizer has a similar civil lawsuit pending against one of its former employees, which it accuses of stealing information about its coronavirus vaccine and a pair of cancer drugs. And in a criminal case, a former Genentech scientist and her husband were convicted in 2021 of stealing trade secrets to give to another company, STAT noted.
Now, J&J is suing a former employee, Andrew Brackbill, who spent 24 years working on finance, pricing, and market strategy. He left the company last summer.
Most recently, he oversaw trade channel strategies for J&J’s Strategic Customer Group, where he worked on developing plans for drug pricing, distribution channels, and J&J market strategies.
The lawsuit says Brackbill pilfered the sensitive business information in violation of federal and state laws intended to protect trade secrets. This included J&J’s 10-year strategic plan, information about products under development, market and distributor analysis, and clinical study results.
J&J learned through an automated security alert that Brackbill had downloaded the documents to an external hard drive in his final weeks of employment. A forensic analysis of his computer found that he accessed the files after his employment at Pfizer began, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit further alleges that Brackbill had signed a noncompete that prevented him from working for a competitor in a job similar to his J&J-affiliated role.
Recently, J&J learned from Pfizer that Brackbill is now leading contract strategy for Pfizer’s U.S. market access group, which, according to the lawsuit, is equivalent to the unit he worked for at the J&J subsidiary.
Neither Brackbill nor J&J’s attorneys responded to The Inquirer’s request for comment. Pfizer, which is not being sued, also did not provide comment on the allegations raised in the lawsuit.