That year, she had made discoveries in her monomers research lab that she believed were groundbreaking. Indeed, they would lead to nine patents for a new way of making acrylics, and she was eager to be recognized.

That's not what happened.

"If a monkey makes a catalyst work," her supervisor asked, "should the monkey get a promotion?"

Lin, who is Chinese, took the comment as a racial insult. She filed a discrimination claim, and two years later, Rohm & Haas paid her $100,000 in a settlement. She also resigned from the company.

But the battle between researcher and chemical giant was far from over. Seven years later - a long time for such cases - the enmity between the parties is just as bitter, and a legal conflict between them drags on through court, running up millions of dollars in attorneys' fees and fines.

Disclosed for the first time last month at the request of The Inquirer, the voluminous Rohm & Haas v. Dr. Manhua Mandy Lin trade-secrets case reads like a legal street brawl, replete with head butts, ear bites, and punches below the belt.

Lin's attorneys claim pervasive fraud by Rohm & Haas in its pursuit of its former employee. Rohm & Haas says Lin stole from the company and is stubborn, loony and maybe hallucinatory.

Lin, one of the first scientists hired for a cutting-edge research team, had wide access to Rohm & Haas' labs and trade secrets and could have walked off with information about technology worth millions of dollars, the Philadelphia company says. If the information gets out, it could threaten the economic well-being of Rohm & Haas and its 16,000 employees.

Lin said she did not steal or disclose any trade secrets; Rohm & Haas just doesn't want her as an independent scientist and competitor. It is trying to crush her financially, hounding her from lab to lab with court orders, she says.

Broadly speaking, the messy clash is part of a surge in intellectual-property litigation in the United States over the last two decades, as new products and innovation have driven corporate success in global markets.

Companies go to great lengths to protect innovation, even though technology often catches up with trade secrets in a year or two. Attorneys say Rohm & Haas v. Lin is an exceedingly long trade-secrets case.

Courts are now being asked to draw lines, experts say, between employee rights and their ability to move between jobs and the rights of intellectual-property owners.

The case is a cautionary tale: For employees, do not leave a corporation on a sour note. For companies, remember: A discriminatory remark can reverberate for a long, long time.

Lin's background

Lin was raised in Fujian Province, the daughter of two teachers, and sent at 17 to the countryside during Mao's Cultural Revolution for reeducation as a "barefoot doctor" - in her case, a "barefoot dentist."

In the 1980s, she won a scholarship to State University of New York at Stony Brook on Long Island, where she earned a doctorate in organic chemistry. She then followed her husband, who obtained a job at Merck & Co. Inc., to the Philadelphia area. In 1989, she went to work as a researcher for Rohm & Haas Co., of Spring House.

The events leading up to the trade-secrets case began, innocently enough, Lin said, with a 1997 focus group intended to build camaraderie.

A survey taken the year before had uncovered discontent, and Lin and 20 other Asian employees were asked to discuss their concerns. They were told, Lin said, that they would be protected from reprisal.

So Lin told the focus group leader that she had not been consulted when Rohm & Haas outsourced research on her project to China, even though she could have helped with the language.