One of the leading COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, Pfizer, has sued an employee who served the Company for 15 years. It has alleged that Chun Xiao Li, who was preparing to join a competitor biopharmaceutical company, had stolen confidential documents from the Company.
Li, who worked as an associate director in the statistics department of the biopharma company, has been accused of transferring confidential information from the official laptop to her personal devices.
Pfizer has filed a complaint against Li in the San Diego Federal court on Tuesday. In the complaint, it alleges that the former employed breached a confidential agreement by uploading more than 12,000 files without permission to her personal accounts and devices from the laptop which was issued to her by the Company.
Information and documents compromised included internal assessments and recommendations pertaining to the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Further, information pertaining to the Company’s relationship with its German vaccine partner, as well as presentations related to cancer antibodies were also compromised.
According to Pfizer, Li was being offered a job at biopharmaceutical firm, Xencor, a competitor, to whom she intended to hand over the information. She was to join Xencor on November 29. Pfizer alleges that Li misled it and did not honestly disclose what and how much of information she took, and that she even presented another laptop for investigation, instead of the one she was using.
