Item 1. Legal Proceedings
Item 1. Legal Proceedings
In December 2019, we learned of a complaint that had been filed by Dr. De-Chu Christopher Tang (“Plaintiff”). We received a copy of the complaint on January 2, 2020, and on January 24, 2020, we removed the case to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (No. 4:20-CV-00063-ALM-CAN), where it is currently pending (the “Texas Lawsuit”). Plaintiff amended his complaint on February 25, 2020, naming Vipin K. Garg and David J. Drutz as defendants, in addition to the Company (Dr. Garg, Dr. Drutz, and the Company are collectively referred to as “Defendants”). In March 2020 the Defendants filed a motion to dismiss the complaint. The Court denied the motion without prejudice and allowed Plaintiff an opportunity to file an amended complaint. Plaintiff’s second amended complaint was filed on April 17, 2020, and Defendants filed a motion to dismiss that complaint on May 1, 2020. A hearing on Defendants’ motion to dismiss was held on May 20, 2020, and the motion is currently pending. Plaintiff, who is representing himself, alleges five causes of action against Defendants, based on (1) Defendants’ alleged retention of Plaintiff’s lab notebooks after the termination of his employment in 2012; (2) alleged plagiarism based on publishing an article without naming Plaintiff as an author; (3) use of the Adhigh System, which Plaintiff alleges he developed; (4) allegations that Defendants manipulated the Company’s stock and caused a decrease in value; and (5) allegations that the Defendants “wast[ed] government grant money and poison[ed] science by leaving data to rot.”
A prior lawsuit filed by the Plaintiff against us in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, resulted in the entry of a Final Consent Judgment and Permanent Injunction on August 25, 2016 (the “Alabama Judgment”). In the Alabama Judgment, the court declared, among other things, that we owned the DVD technology that Plaintiff had developed during his employment with us, and enjoined Plaintiff from “using or disclosing any Proprietary Information or Innovations relating to the DVD technology and any associated intellectual property rights” without our written consent.
Text extracted from the filing as submitted to EDGAR. Formatting, tables and exhibits are simplified for reading; the original document is authoritative for anything you rely on.