Alleged Conflict of Interest Inside Sandia May Explain Failure to Transfer Technology
15 October 2005
On the heels of Nanodetex Corporation's recent $225 million lawsuit against Sandia Corporation for failing to fulfill its duties under a 2001 exclusive technology transfer licensing agreement, new developments have pointed Nanodetex principals to a serious conflict of interest involving members of Sandia's technology transfer team.
According to an amended lawsuit filed today, several Sandia National Laboratories employees withheld crucial terrorist-fighting technology from Nanodetex in an attempt to illegally take the technology and start their own company.
After filing suit in September, Nanodetex (www.nanodetex.com) principals discovered that Defiant Technologies (www.defiant-tech.com) has been in the process of negotiating a license with the Lab that may overlap Nanodetex's exclusive rights. Not only are Defiant's officers all employees of Sandia, they are also some of the very individuals who were supposed to transfer the technology to Nanodetex in the first place.
"These employees have put the public in jeopardy, and the worst part is they did it for their own personal profit," said Nanodetex President Al Sylwester. "It turns out some people inside the Lab first tried to kill the license deal with us, then they messed with our funding, and now they are trying to steal our license and start their own company. This is a terrible case of conflict of interest," said Sylwester.
"These Lab employees held back this data to enrich themselves," said Angelo Salamone, COO of Nanodetex.
Nanodetex (formerly MCL Technologies) formed in 2001 to make and market a detection system that could sniff out chemical, nerve, and toxic agents as terrorists brought them into public places. Four years after the original license agreement, certain critical design information as well as data for toxic chemical and explosives detection still has not been transferred from Sandia.
With a dire need for Nanodetex's product within the US and abroad, the only thing stopping Nanodetex from completing the product and getting it to market is Sandia's unwillingness to transfer the technology.
"We have to get this product to market," said Sylwester. "God forbid there be another terrorist attack that could have been prevented had this product been in place. Our message to Sandia is simple: give us the technology you promised us four years ago and we'll have this product in public places in a few months."
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Source: Nanodetex Corporation
Source: PR Newswire
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