Lumenis (Nasdaq: LUME) today filed a $30 million lawsuit against Dr. Shimon Eckhouse with the Tel Aviv District Court. Eckhouse founded and controlled Lumenis from late 1991 through 1999. Lumenis develops devices for esthetic medical treatments.
Lumenis alleges that Eckhouse and other defendants stole trade secrets and copied technologies from the company.
Lumenis alleges that Syneron Medical, founded by Eckhouse and the other defendants in July 2000, "was established with the purpose of creating a product essentially similar to the plaintiff’s products and selling it through the plaintiff’s distributors to its customers, by misappropriating its trade secrets and breaching fiduciary duties of the defendants and/or Syneron and/or some of them to the plaintiff… by copying the plaintiff’s technology and by being unjustly enriched at the plaintiff’s expense.”
Lumenis claims that Eckhouse “ ‘succeeded’, through Syneron, in manufacturing a product identical to the product manufactured by the plaintiff.
“The short time following Dr. Eckhouse’s retirement from the plaintiff until the completion of the manufacture of the copied product clearly shows the unlawful cynical exploitation taken with respect to information which was deposited in trust into his hands by way of attempting to cause actual damage to the plaintiff following his removal from the management of its interests and by causing image and financial damage to the plaintiff’s business from which the plaintiff is still today finding difficult to rehabilitate itself.”
A letter of defense has not yet been filed.
Published by Globes [online] - www.globes.co.il - on September 12, 2002