A Diagnostics & Imaging Week
Molecular Diagnostics (MDI; Chicago) has filed suit vs. Diamics (Novato, California) for unfair business practices, misappropriation of MDI trade secrets and proprietary information, and patent and copyright infringement.
The civil suit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Diamics, seeking injunctive relief and damages in excess of $30 million.
MDI is the developer of an automated diagnostic system for cervical screening.
Diamics was formed by Peter Gombrich, MDI’s former chairman. MDI alleges that Gombrich and a former employee misappropriated MDI’s proprietary information, trade secrets and patented products.
The suit alleges that Diamics’ actions “were accompanied by oppressive and malicious actions to take MDI’s proprietary trade secrets and convert them to its own use ...”
The assets include U.S. patents titled “Physician’s collector,” “Cervical screening system” and “Personal cervical cell collector,” along with the InPath System and related image analysis systems, which screen for cancer and cancer-related diseases; the Cocktail CVX, which detects and highlights abnormal cervical cells; mapping systems based on obtaining cervical cell specimens preserved on a MDI cervical cell collector; and Cellular liquid preservatives designed to optimize molecular based testing.
In other legalities:
• Richard Scrushy, founder and former CEO of HealthSouth (Birmingham, Alabama), last week pleaded not guilty to new charges against him in U.S. District Court in Montgomery, Alabama.
The plea comes following his recent indictment for bribery, involving former Alabama Gov. Don Siegalman Scrushy appeared in a Montgomery federal court to deny charges of bribery and mail fraud, the indictment including 30 counts.
Prosecutors charge that Scrushy paid Siegalman $500,000 and in return received appointment to a state board that controls new hospital sitings and expansion of bed capacity.
Siegelman and two members of his administration also pleaded not guilty to the charges, which included allegations of racketeering, extortion, money laundering and obstruction of justice.
After making his plea, Scrushy and three ministers who accompanied him prayed outside the courtroom, and the following day he and his lawyers held a news conference on the set of his evangelical TV show, Viewpoint, in Birmingham. The defense lawyers accused the government of baiting them into cooperating with their investigation by misleading them about the indictments.
Louis Franklin, an acting U.S. attorney, termed as “inflammatory” the statements made by Scrushy’s lawyers but did not otherwise respond.
In June, a federal jury in Birmingham found Scrushy innocent of more than 30 charges of securities fraud, mail fraud and two violations of the Sarbanes-Oxley financial disclosure act related to a $2.7 billion accounting fraud at HealthSouth.