Two found guilty of DuPont trade secret theft

A US jury has found two businessmen guilty of stealing and selling trade secrets belonging to chemical company DuPont that were worth more than $20 million.

The pair, Walter Liew and Robert Meagerle, were accused of stealing DuPont’s method of making titanium oxide (TiO2) and selling it to a Chinese state-owned steel-manufacturer, the Pangang Group.

In a ruling on Wednesday, March 5, the US District Court for the Northern District of California found both men guilty of conspiracy to commit trade secret theft and economic espionage.

The court said Liew and his wife, a Chinese citizen, started a company in the US in the 1990s and hired a team of ex-DuPont employees, including Meagerle who worked as an engineer, to reveal its trade secrets.

Liew and his company, USA Performance Technology Inc, then sold them to Pangang Group for more than $20 million, the proceeds of which went to Liew and his wife.

Liew denied selling five DuPont trade secrets, including an internal report about a computer model for a chemical process and a document containing the process and equipment needed to design a titanium oxide production line.

The defendants planned to reveal DuPont’s secret chloride-route technology to Pangang Group and build modern production facilities in the country, avoiding the need for costly research.

The Sichuan province-based company was also charged but a possible trial has been stalled after prosecutors’ attempts to notify the company were deemed legally insufficient.

The defence for the two men argued there was no trade secret theft as the information was in the public domain and Liew had been granted patents related to the process.

In a statement, Melinda Haag, attorney for the court, said fighting trade secret theft was one of the “top priorities” and that anyone who attempted to steal information would be “aggressively” pursued.

“As today’s verdict demonstrates, foreign governments threaten our economic and national security by engaging in aggressive and determined efforts to steal US IP,” Haag added.

DuPont is based in Wilmington, Delaware and manufactures a variety of chemical products.

It invented the chloride-route process for manufacturing TiO2 in the late-1940s and since then has invested in research and development to improve the production process.

The company has been contacted for comment on the verdict.

Liew’s wife, Christina Hong Qiao Liew, has also been charged but her trial will be heard separately at a later date.

Hou Shengdong, the vice director of the TiO2 project at the Pangang Group, was also charged and is currently on the run.

Liew and Meagerle will be sentenced in June.