A former patent lawyer for L’Oreal USA claims in a federal whistleblower lawsuit in Newark that he was fired after complaining about company quotas for patent applications.

L’Oreal, the French maker of cosmetics and hair products, set quotas of 40 patent applications in 2014 for its U.S. research division in Clark, and the company’s global quota that year was 500 patent applications, according to the suit by Steven Trzaska, the company’s former head of patents and business development.