Our Litigators of the Week are Eric Dittmann and Kecia Reynolds of Paul Hastings. They have been representing client Viking Therapeutics Inc., a company working on a potential treatment for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, in trade secret proceedings before the U.S. International Trade Commission involving Ascletis, a Chinese biotech company.

In a decision made public this week, Chief Administrative Law Judge Clark Cheney found that Viking’s trade secrets were protectable and misappropriated, and that the misappropriation injured the domestic market for Viking’s drug candidate. The decision, which recommends a seven-year exclusion order barring the Ascletis tablets from the U.S., comes after Clark previously allowed the case to move past the ITC’s expedited 100-day proceedings considering whether there was any injury to the domestic market. The judge also sanctioned the Ascletis parties and their initial lawyers at Rimon after finding “an extensive pattern of inappropriate conduct” during discovery in the run-up to the evidentiary hearing in the expedited proceedings.