AbbVie Inc. v. BeiGene, LTD., et al., No. 24-cv-8167, (N.D. Ill. May 12, 2026) (Cummings, J.).
Judge Cummings denied defendants’ Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss AbbVie’s Defend Trade Secrets Act claim. AbbVie alleges that BeiGene lured former AbbVie Senior Research Scientist Dr. Huaqing Liu out of retirement to serve as Executive Director of BeiGene’s Department of Chemistry in order to gain access to AbbVie’s BTK degrader trade secrets. AbbVie further alleges that BeiGene then used those secrets to dramatically change the course of its own BTK degrader development, filing at least six patent applications containing designs that closely resembled or exactly replicated AbbVie’s trade secret designs.
Defendants raised four arguments:
- AbbVie failed to allege Liu took any tangible information;
- AbbVie did not plead protective measures specific to the BTK program;
- AbbVie failed to plausibly allege BeiGene’s patent applications were derived from AbbVie; and
- the Complaint failed to adequately specify the alleged trade secrets.
The Court rejected each argument. Of particular interest, the Court held:
- AbbVie only needs to plausibly plead misappropriation of a single trade secret to survive a motion to dismiss. A Rule 12(b)(6) motion does not permit piecemeal dismissals of parts of claims, chipping away at claims is the role of summary judgment.
- Combinations of publicly available components can still qualify as trade secrets where the unique combination affords a competitive advantage.
- The Seventh Circuit requires only that protective measures be “reasonable,” and it is “immaterial” that AbbVie applies the same confidentiality policy to other information. AbbVie need not necessarily show a heightened protection program for the specific trade secrets at issue.
- Trade secrets can exist in employees’ memories. A trade secret plaintiff does not need to show that an actual document was taken.
- Circumstantial evidence, including suspicious timing between Liu’s departure and BeiGene’s filing of patent applications containing AbbVie’s designs, is sufficient to support misappropriation allegations at the pleading stage.
- Claims under the DTSA are not subject to a heightened pleading standard. At the pleading stage, plaintiffs can plead specificity “in broad strokes.”
The motion to dismiss was denied in its entirety.