Indian engineer gets 1.5-year jail for trade secrets theft

BY A STAFF WRITER

TRENTON (NJ) — An Indian engineer who formerly lived in Mahwah, New Jersey, was on October 16 sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing trade secrets from two global medical technology companies based in northern New Jersey, U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Paul Fishman announced.

Ketankumar Maniar, 38, aka “Ketan Maniar,” was caught in his hotel room as he was planning his escape back to India in June, 2013.

He pleaded guilty earlier before US District Judge Joel Pisano to an information charging him with two counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets for his own economic benefit.

Maniar has been in custody since his June 2013 arrest. In addition to the prison term, Judge Pisano ordered Maniar to pay $32,454 in restitution to Becton, Dickinson and Co. (BD) and ordered him to forfeit items used to further his crimes, including computers and storage devices.

According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court, Maniar worked from November 2004 until his resignation in January 2011 at C.R. Bard Inc. (Bard), based in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and BD, based in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, two of the world’s leading manufacturers of medical technologies.

Maniar worked as an engineer at Bard’s Salt Lake City facility and was responsible for developing molding processes and specifications for catheters, ports and other medical products.
From February 2012 until his resignation on May 24, 2013, Maniar worked as a staff engineer at BD’s Franklin Lakes headquarters, where he helped manufacture pre-fillable syringes and pen injectors.

Through his work at Bard and BD, Maniar was able to steal secret information related to the companies’ products, including Bard’s development of the first implantable port used for power injection of pharmaceutical drugs throughout the body.

Maniar also had access to secret information related to a self-administered disposable pen injector still under development by BD and not yet available for commercial sale.

The Indian engineer admitted he stole Bard and BD trade secrets that he kept after his resignation from those companies. Maniar downloaded numerous files containing Bard or BD product information from his work computers onto multiple computer storage devices, including external hard drives and thumb drives.

He also used his work e-mail accounts at Bard and BD to forward trade secrets to his personal e-mail accounts. On June 3, 2013, FBI agents raided and searched Maniar’s rental car and the New Jersey hotel room he stayed in while planning a move back to India, a release from the US Attorney’s office said.
Agents seized—among other things—at least one hard drive containing Bard and BD trade secrets.