A California-based Chinese couple has been charged with stealing trade secrets from an American children’s hospital for the benefit of their Chinese and U.S. biotech companies, according to a federal indictment unsealed on Sept. 16.
Zhou Yu, 49, and his wife Chen Li, 46, worked as researchers at the Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Research Institute in Columbus, Ohio, prosecutors said in a press release. They worked in separate medical labs at the institute for 10 years until 2017 and 2018 respectively, and founded a biotech company in China in 2015—selling the same technology that they had been researching.
