TECHNOLOGY : Former Amgen Worker Sentenced
From United Press International
A former research associate with a biotechnology company was sentenced to 15 months in prison Monday for stealing the company’s secrets and trying to sell them to a competitor.
John Stephen Wilson, 33, of Santa Barbara, who worked at the genetics company Amgen Inc. in Thousand Oaks, received his sentence for orchestrating a mail fraud scheme to sell Amgen’s proprietary information to Genetics Institute of Cambridge, Mass., which was competing with Amgen for a patent to make EPO, a substance Amgen developed to combat anemia by enhancing the body’s ability to produce red blood cells.
Amgen and Genetics Institute are still locked in a legal battle over the EPO patents.
