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A former University of Pennsylvania researcher who is suing the school and the head of its gene therapy program has fired back against the defendants' motion to have her lawsuit dismissed.
Susan M. Faust, who worked as a postdoctoral researcher with the Penn gene therapy program from 2010 to early 2013, and her company NxGen Vector Solutions sued Penn and Dr. James Wilson in January alleging they engaged in "unethical and illegal conduct" in their licensing of technology she invented.
Last month, Penn and Wilson filed a motion asking a U.S. District Court judge to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing it is "too little and too late." Faust, they claim, failed to plead any claims on which relief can be granted and the statute of limitations on most of the counts brought by Faust have expired. They also said they "dispute the veracity" of many of the allegations.
In her response to the motion filed last week, Faust said all of her claims are sufficiently pled and assertions that any statute of limitations in the case had expired are "premature and improper" and an issue for a jury to decide.
Faust maintains she followed all the rules under Penn's patent policy with the promise that she would be compensated if her invention was licensed and, if not, Penn would return her ownership rights. Faust said she honored the agreement, but Penn and Wilson did not — resulting in her lawsuit alleging breach of contract, unjust enrichment, tortious interference, and failure to pay wages.
In her response, Faust goes on to state that her "life’s work is being held hostage" by Penn and Wilson solely to prevent her "and society" from recognizing the benefits of her invention allegedly because it competes with vector technology developed and commercialized by Wilson.
"What started as a promising position as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania evolved into a decade-long nightmare," according to her response, which alleges Faust has been "forced to watch for years as defendants profited from her invention, while simultaneously refusing to allow her to commercialize her ground-breaking discovery."
Faust claims Penn is acting as a "private-sector monopolist without regard for its promises or societal standards." She also disputes Penn's claims that it is neither licensing Faust’s patent nor is in any negotiations to do so, and alleges the university refuses to return the patent rights to her after she spent six figures establishing a company to commercialize the technology.
In her breach of contract lawsuit filed Jan. 29 at U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, Faust, now a resident of Washington, D.C., claims she and NxGen are due payments under the university's patent policy, which requires Penn to pay a patented technology inventor 30% of any cash or non-cash compensation it receives as a result of a licensing deal. She is also asking the court to award her complete ownership of a patent covering the gene therapy vector technology at the center of the dispute.
The lawsuit states that Faust, working in collaboration with Dr. Joseph Rabinowitz of Thomas Jefferson University in 2012, designed what are known as AAV vectors for gene therapy delivery. The AAV vectors have the ability to escape the immune response issues that had challenged the field of gene therapy for decades — resulting in safe and long-lasting gene expression.
According to the lawsuit, Penn entered into a licensing agreement with Biogen Inc. for 12 patents or patent applications, including Faust’s technology, with a maximum value of $2 billion. Faust said she has independently gathered evidence indicating that Penn has licensed her technology to as many as 35 other third-parties, entitling her to compensation.
In their motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Penn and Wilson's attorneys stated, "Nearly all the asserted claims are brought too late, and the statute of limitations has [expired and] nearly all of the asserted claims are also too little because they are based on no more than conclusory allegations. … Notably missing are the requisite plausible facts to support the claims."
In that motion, attorneys for Penn and Wilson said the defendants "dispute the veracity" of many of the allegations in the complaint — but are treating them as true for the motion to dismiss.
