Roche Dismisses Suit Against Former Business Manager, Third Wave

NEW YORK, March 16 (GenomeWeb News) - Roche Diagnostics has dismissed a lawsuit it filed last month against a former employee and the competitor for which he left Roche, according to court papers filed by Roche's attorneys late last week and obtained by GenomeWeb News.

Roche sued John Bellano, a former Midwest regional business manager in its Molecular Diagnostics Group, for allegedly breaching the contract he signed with Roche in 2001 after he quit his job and took on the position of director of sales with Third Wave.

The dismissal of the suit, filed in US District Court in Indianapolis, shows that Bellano and Third Wave agreed to place Bellano in a region where he would not have access to his old Roche clients for six months.

Under his original contract with Roche, Bellano had agreed not to compete against Roche in the region he worked in for six months after he left the company, nor to divulge any of Roche's customer information, sales plans, strategic information, product launch plans, and pricing information.

In its original suit, Roche, filed last month, Roche argued that taking up a similar position with Third Wave after he left the company in the same regional area made it "impossible" and "inevitable" that Bellano would disclose "Roche's confidential, proprietary, and/or trade secret information."

Roche had been seeking an injunction prohibiting Bellano from soliciting former Roche customers for his or Third Wave's benefit, and an unspecified amount of damages for misappropriation of trade secrets, attorneys' fees, and compensatory damages.