Federal Court in SF Found that Gandall Stole Trade Secrets from Former Employer.
San Francisco, CA (October 18, 2024) – In a significant trade secret victory, biotech startup Trilobio, Inc., which has received praise for its work in fully automating labs, won an injunction against former employee Keoni Gandall and his company, Nanala, LLC in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Judge Jon Tigar found that Gandall had stolen trade secrets from Trilobio and ordered him to cease and desist all activity related to the stolen intellectual property.
According to Trilobio’s motion, the source code stolen by Gandall was the foundation of Trilobio’s proprietary technology which exponentially decreases the cost of creating long sequences of DNA for medical and genetic research. Gandall and Nanala were also enjoined from using any other Trilobio intellectual property, including Trilobio’s robotic artificial intelligence technology for conducting genetic experiments and testing.
According to Trilobio’s motion, this technology marries hardware and AI software that creates “bio-robots fitted with sensors enabling them to monitor and modify their behavior as they conduct genetic testing,” including by “us[ing] AI to improve their performance, learn from their mistakes, and diagnose errors in testing processes that would otherwise be undiscovered.”
Trilobio and its founders CEO Roya Amini-Naieni and Head of Robotics Maximilian Schommer were featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 for 2024 for their work in biorobotics.
As Forbes wrote, “Trilobio was created to improve synthetic biology and life science research processes by building robotic lab automation modules coupled with an ‘app store’ to package and distribute lab protocols as code. The goal is to deploy fully automated labs that dramatically improve data quality and reproducibility.”
“We are pleased that the Court took immediate action to protect Trilobio’s trade secrets,” said Amini-Naieni. “Trilobio takes Mr. Gandall’s theft very seriously and will always defend its intellectual property vigorously.”
Trilobio is represented by Ronald J. Fisher and Ellen Leonida of Sideman & Bancroft LLP in San Francisco, California.
Trilobio’s action against Gandall and Nanala is captioned Trilobio, Inc. v. Keoni Gandall and Nanala, Inc., Case No. 4:24-cv-06337-JST (N.D. Cal.).
