Dentsply Sirona (NSDQ:XRAY) was awarded $6.8 million in damages in a trade secret suit after the ex-engineer accused of stealing the designs stopped participating in the legal proceedings, according to court documents.
Former engineer Jian Lu was accused of stealing trade secrets related to a 3- imaging system for the company’s Apollo DI device, according to court documents.
Lu left the company in 2013 and reportedly took with him trade secrets, including technical documents, copyrighted software and a pre-production model of the imaging system to develop a competing product, according to the documents.
A short time after the case began, however, Lu disconnected from the proceedings, court documents report.
“Despite multiple court orders, Lu failed to respond to Plaintiff’s discovery requests, supplied no financial documentation for his businesses, and stopped participating in the lawsuit. Shortly thereafter, Plaintiffs filed a Motion for Summary Judgement. Lu did not oppose the Motion and all maters in Plaintiffs’ Request for Admissions were deemed admitted. Accordingly, the Court granted the Motion for Summary Judgement in favor of Plaintiffs on all four claims,” minutes from the case, recorded October 19, read.
The court granted Dentsply Sirona a total sum of $6.8 million in damages, which includes approximately $6.7 million in damages for misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract and conversion claims and an additional $150,000 for a copyright infringement claim, according to court documents.
Earlier this month, Dentsply Sirona cleared the deck of its upper management, ousting its chairman, CEO and COO, appointing an interim chief executive and promoting from within for the interim operating chief role.
