Former Bard, BD Engineer Pleads Guilty To Stealing Trade Secrets

An engineer who previously worked for Becton Dickinson (BD) and C.R. Bard has pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to two counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets from his former employers.

Indian national Ketankumar “Ketan” Maniar, 37, a former resident of Mahwah, N.J., faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for each count of stealing trade secrets. Sentencing is due on September 23, 2014, according to a report in The Star-Ledger. Maniar has been held in custody since his arrest by FBI on June 20, 2013, the report said.

FBI agents, acting on warrants, seized computers and storage devices — including a hard drive — containing information regarding BD and Bard trade secrets from Maniar’s rental car and hotel room in Ramsey, N.J. The arrest occurred shortly before he was allegedly preparing to flee to his native India to start his own manufacturing device company, according to the report.

Court documents showed that Maniar had worked for BD in its Franklin Lakes, N.J. headquarters from 2012 to 2013, where he was assigned on the production of syringes and pen injectors. Prior to that, he was employed by C.R. Bard from 2004 to 2011 and worked in the company’s Salt Lake City, Utah, facility as an engineer responsible for molding ports and catheters.

“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,” according to a Justice Department press release.  

According to the court’s ruling, Maniar admitted to downloading thousands of files from the companies’ computers onto multiple computer storage devices, including portable thumb drives and hard drives, and to forwarding files using his work email to his personal email account. He also admitted to keeping all confidential and proprietary information after his resignation from the two companies, in violation of separate trade secret policy contracts he signed with both companies.