Corporate Espionage Allegations Reveal Storm in a Teacup at Pharma Conference
There was a behind-the-scenes drama at the Pharma Competitive Intelligence conference in New Jersey last week involving allegations that the organizer of the conference engaged in "misappropriation of company assets" and that subpoenas have been sent to Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi-Aventis, Merck, Novartis, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
But a close look reveals that the allegations have less to do with corporate espionage and more to do with a gossip-mongering spat between rival conference organizers.
About 250 execs attended the meeting, including luminaries such as Merck's vp of global competitive intelligence Daniel Pascheles, Pfizer's director of information and knowledge management Sue Ward and Novartis' head of global competitive intelligence Monika Giese.
Prior to the conference, many speakers and attendees were contacted by email and press release to alert them that a "legal team" was "prosecuting" a case against PCI organizer Amy Yueh, and that a trial was scheduled for January 2009, Yueh said in an interview with BNET. One such email stated:
Johnson & Johnson is the first pharmaceutical company to provide documents to aid the prosecution in the case against the Pharma CI Conference marketer Amy Yueh. Files were delivered in compliance with a subpoena served in July. Ms. Yueh will stand trial on January 26, 2009 in Hackensack, NJ, on charges of misappropriation of corporate property. Sanofi-Aventis and Pfizer have also responded that their companies will cooperate in the investigation of Ms. Yueh. Documents and witnesses are anticipated in the coming weeks. Subpoenas have also served Merck, Novartis, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.But what those emails and releases don't say is that the legal action is being brought by a rival conference organizer, Mark Alexay, who is involved in a routine New Jersey state civil suit against Yueh, his ex-business partner. Alexay also leaves out the fact that New Jersey's courts have twice ruled against him in his campaign against Yueh, and that he had scheduled a competing conference, inconveniently, for Oct. 6 -- less than a month after Yueh's.
Yueh and Alexay once jointly organized a pharma conference in 2007, but Yueh split and began promoting her own, according to a ruling in their lawsuit that was handed down in February of this year. In the suit, Alexay accuses Yueh of "secretly organizing her competitive conference while still an employee," the ruling says.
"That whole thing is ludicrous," Yueh says of Alexay's behavior since then.
The court turned down Alexay's attempts to stop Yueh's conference from going ahead, and noted that Yueh left "in light of [Alexay]'s oppressive and coercive behavior." An appeals court declined to overturn the ruling.
"The stuff with the subpoenas -- he's trying to say that before I quit his one-person firm I secretly contracted all these people to go with me," Yueh says. In fact, while Alexay's releases make it sound like something has been stolen from the drug companies under subpoena, all Alexay is actually claiming is that Yueh ran off with his contact lists.
"He has sent out a series of five or six press releases, all couched in a way to make it sound like she's being criminally prosecuted for theft," says Howard Berger, Yueh's lawyer. Berger said the court has granted him permission to bring a defamation case against Alexay.
Alexay and his lawyer both declined to comment.