US firm sues Emcure for $950 million over 'stealing' trade secrets

MUMBAI:

US firm

, HDT Bio Corp, has filed a $950 million suit against Pune-based

Emcure

in a Washington federal court, accusing the Indian company of "stealing"

trade secrets

for a new Covid-19 vaccine.


HDT Bio said the Pune firm had stolen its innovative vaccine technology which it had licensed to Emcure's subsidiary Gennova for manufacture and distribution in India.

The US biopharmaceutical company added that its innovative vaccine uses a proprietary delivery platform, Lipid InOrganic Nanoparticle (LION) formulation to deliver immune-stimulating RNA fragments to targeted cells.

It may be mentioned here that HDT Bio had signed an agreement with Gennova Biopharmaceuticals in July 2020 for jointly developing a potential Covid-19 vaccine, using the messenger or mRNA technology.

When contacted, an Emcure spokesperson told TOI: “The License Agreement, which is the subject matter of the suit, is between Gennova Biopharmaceuticals and HDT. Emcure Pharma has no connection whatsoever with the matter. Emcure has been legally advised that no suit lies against it; and it has been wrongly joined as a party. The company is initiating steps to have the claims dismissed.”

A Gennova spokesperson stated: "We state that there is no legal merit in the suit. We assert that there is no contravention of breach on any contractual obligations or provisions of law. We shall defend such frivolous litigation vigorously."

"Emcure recently announced that it intends to go public on the strength of its so-called proprietary mRNA platform which includes a Covid-19 vaccine. But that mRNA platform and vaccine belong to Plaintiff HDT Bio Corp," the suit, a copy of which is available with the TOI, says.

"Unlike some other vaccines, which must be stored and transported at extremely cold temperatures, a vaccine with LION can be stored in standard refrigerators or even freeze-dried and stored at temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Plaintiff HDT developed a mRNA vaccine against Covid-19 that is safer, cheaper, more portable, and likely more effective than the mRNA vaccines on the market, which are themselves extraordinary feats built on decades of research," it says.

Emcure and its subsidiary’s theft of HDT’s intellectual property breaches the license agreement and constitutes misappropriation of HDT’s billion-dollar

trade

secrets, it adds.