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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
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Cybertheft Alleged in Pharmaceutical R&D

MANHATTAN (CN) - A company that provides "comprehensive real-time R&D intelligence to the pharmaceutical industry" claims a competitor set itself up in business by stealing massive amounts of information from its database, to develop its own system.

Citeline sued Indegene Lifesystems Federal Court, alleging computer fraud, conversion, misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of contract.

Citeline, a Delaware corporation that operates out of New York City, claims it "provides the world's most comprehensive real-time R&D intelligence to the pharmaceutical industry, covering global clinical trial, investigator and drug intelligence."

Indegene, based in India, with offices in New Jersey and California, is run by managing director Rajesh Nair in New Jersey, according to the complaint.

Citeline's prized database is called TrialTrove. It calls it "an interactive computer platform that delivers the world's most comprehensive ongoing clinical trials information, tracking up to three times as many trials as the next most popular data source. TrialTrove provides its subscribers with a single, integrated intelligence solution that saves dramatic amounts of research time by permitting pharmaceutical companies to obtain a complete picture of clinical programs by therapeutic area and disease."

Citeline says the data in TrialTrove "is drawn from over 18,000 unique sources and analyzed by the industry's largest team - over 250 full-time expert analysts and editors."

Citeline claims Indegene was granted limited access to its TrialTrove system and signed an agreement to "abide by all confidentiality and non-use obligations set forth in the subscription agreement."

But it says Indegene immediately violated the agreement.

"Despite being limited to researching specific projects of the particular subscriber, defendant repeatedly accessed and downloaded from TrialTrove large volumes of data and information that were unrelated to legitimate projects," Citeline claims. "Defendant accessed and exported many tens of thousands of records that were not used for authorized products ... these materials were used to begin the creation of defendant's competitive product."

Indegene calls its competing service TrialPedia. It uses TrialTrove as its primary source of data, Citeline claims.

Citeline seeks damages and an injunction to stop Indegene from marketing and distributing TrialPedia.

Citeline is represented by Eric Prager with K&L Gates.

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