GREENEVILLE, Tenn. — A Michigan chemist was sentenced to serve around 14 years in prison Monday after authorities said she stole trade secrets from drink can companies to set up her own company in China.
They said Dr. Xiaorong You, 59, from Lansing, stole trade secrets about how BPA-free coatings are made for the inside of drink cans. She got access to the secrets while working at The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta and the Eastman Chemical Company in Kingsport.
Dr. You had been hired as the principal engineer for global research at Coca-Cola between December 2012 and Aug. 2017 and as a result, had access to the secrets. The secrets technically belonged to Akzo-Nobel, BASF, Dow Chemical, PPG, Toyochem, and Sherwin Williams, but she could access them through Coca-Cola's agreements to research and test various BPA-free technologies.
She also had access to the secrets while working for Eastman Chemical Company in Kingsport from Sept. 2017 through June 2018 as a packaging application development manager.
According to court records, the secrets cost around $120 million to develop. They said Dr. You used the secrets to set up a new BPA-free coating company in China.
They also said Dr. You and her corporate partner, the Weihai Jinhong Group, received millions of dollars in grants from the Chinese government for the new company.
BPA was used to coat the inside of cans and other food containers to minimize how much the container influenced the food's flavor. It also helped prevent containers from corroding or reacting with the food inside of them.
However, health officials later learned that BPA posed health risks. They learned it could impact the brain and impact the development of children and fetuses.
So, companies searching for other ways to prevent containers from interacting with the food they held. They said developing BPA-free alternatives was a "complex, expensive and time-consuming process."