INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
DuPont retiree charged with theft Trade secrets were to be used to help consulting clients U.S. authorities have charged a retired chemical engineer with stealing trade secrets from DuPont to be used on behalf of his consulting clients. Anchi Hou, 61, who worked at DuPont for 27 years, is accused of downloading more than 20,000 files on DuPont’s flexographic printing plate technology in the months before his retirement at the end of 2016. If convicted, Hou could receive a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and pay a fine of up to $250,000. According to a Federal Bureau of Investigation complaint filed against him in the U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J., Hou worked at DuPont’s advanced printing division in Parlin, N.J., and was involved in the development of photopolymeric plates used in printing presses. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemical engineering from National Taiwan University and a Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University. Four days after forming a flexographic printing consultancy in November 2016,
Hou told DuPont he planned to retire at the end of the year. In December, Hou was discovered taking photos of equipment in the Parlin facility. The firm then checked computer records and found that Hou had been downloading proprietary documents since July. DuPont filed a civil complaint last month
DuPont supplies flexographic plates to printing firms.
suggesting that Hou had visited printing firms in Taiwan in July 2016 with an eye to selling proprietary information to them. The FBI arrested Hou on April 7 after learning that he and his family had booked airline flights to leave the U.S. Trade secrets theft has long been a problem for DuPont and other chemical and pharmaceutical companies. In 2014, a federal jury convicted former DuPont engineer Robert Maegerle of stealing trade secrets related to DuPont’s titanium dioxide production process and selling them to a firm controlled by the Chinese government. In 2011, former Dow Chemical and Cargill scientist Kexue Huang pleaded guilty in federal court to stealing trade secrets related to Dow’s Spinosad insecticide and the DNA sequence of an enzyme under development at Cargill. Congress made trade secrets theft a federal crime in 1996. A 2016 federal law backed by companies such as Dow, DuPont, Eli Lilly & Co., Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer now allows companies to seek compensation for the theft of trade secrets.—MARC REISCH
ENVIRONMENT
China steps up pollution fight
CREDIT: DUPONT (WORKER); ISTOCK (CYCLIST)
National government deploys inspectors to crack down on industrial pollution China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) is sending 5,600 inspectors throughout the north of China as part of a one-year crackdown on the air pollution that afflicted Beijing, Tianjin, and other major Chinese cities for most of the winter. The national government’s move suggests that it doubts the ability or willingness of provincial and municipal administrations to confront polluters. In a notice posted on its website, MEP said that so far, its inspectors have discovered that the city of Handan in Hebei province was allowing the illegal operation of coal-fired boilers that had previously been ordered to close. A police investigation is ongoing, the ministry said. National officials have also found close to 100 other violations after inspecting nearly 200 sites, MEP said. The national inspectors’ methods include surprise visits to industrial sites and undercover work.
The north of China struggled with extremely high levels of air pollution throughout the winter. In early January, the U.S. embassy in Beijing, which measures outdoor air quality, reported that its Air Quality Index had repeatedly breached 400, a level it considers hazardous. Chinese government officials have been attempting to pressure polluters and suspected polluters for several months now. As early as November, several firms in the Hebei province city of Shijiazhuang, including the drug company CSPC Pharmaceutical, were ordered to temporarily stop production. Chemical firms throughout China face increasing pressure to improve their environmental performance, be it in terms of water or air emissions, says Kai Pflug, president of the Shanghai-based advisory firm Management Consulting–Chemicals. “I am very impressed with the government,” he says.
Citizens in Beijing and other large Chinese cities routinely don masks to avoid pollution.
At the same time, urban residents may not notice much improvement, at least in the near term, Pflug says. “Even if authorities could manage to cut the pollution caused by each manufacturer by an average of 10 or 15% in one year—which would be amazing—total emissions wouldn’t go down very noticeably in an economy growing 7% annually.” The Chinese government’s longer-term fix, he adds, is to invest in cleaner technologies.—
JEAN-FRANÇOIS TREMBLAY APRIL 17, 2017 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN
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