Archer files response to US court in ongoing lawsuit with Wisk and brings new counterclaims to case

Archer has filed its Answer to the U.S. Dis­trict Court for the North­ern Dis­trict of Cal­i­for­nia and a Motion to Dis­miss the ongo­ing law­suit with Wisk, which alleges Archer stole trade secrets and patent infringe­ments of its eVTOL air­craft design.

In the answer, Archer details infor­ma­tion and says it devel­oped its ‘12 tilt 6’ design through an inde­pen­dent eVTOL con­sul­tant, before any Wisk employ­ees ever joined Archer.

The com­pa­ny has also filed coun­ter­claims for tor­tious inter­fer­ence and unfair com­pe­ti­tion, alleg­ing Wisk made false and unsup­port­ed pub­lic state­ments out­side of the lit­i­ga­tion designed to harm Archer.

In a press release announc­ing the update, the com­pa­ny said: “Wisk’s Com­plaint does not iden­ti­fy a sin­gle spe­cif­ic Wisk trade secret, let alone any evi­dence of mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion. Fur­ther­more, there also is noth­ing secret about using 12 rotors on a fixed wing, tilt­ing rotors, or a V tail.

“Wisk’s patent claims are equal­ly mer­it­less and improp­er; Archer does not infringe Wisk’s patents, and Wisk has no basis to allege oth­er­wise.

As detailed in the Answer, Archer has said it designed its air­craft inde­pen­dent­ly, work­ing with Flight­House Engi­neer­ing which was hired in Sep­tem­ber 2019. It added Flight­House first mod­eled the ‘12 tilt 6’ design before any for­mer Wisk employ­ees joined Archer, and Archer’s Answer includes sev­er­al exam­ples of FlightHouse’s draw­ings and analy­sis.

The com­pa­ny added: “This law­suit was filed by Wisk for an obvi­ous and imper­mis­si­ble pur­pose: to impede the suc­cess of, and invest­ment in, Archer and its state-of-the-art air­craft design.

“This case has noth­ing to do with the design of Archer’s air­craft, and every­thing to do with the suc­cess of Archer’s busi­ness – and the fail­ure of Wisk’s. Wisk and its pre­de­ces­sors have suf­fered from years of dis­or­gan­i­sa­tion and failed design, as well as employ­ee defec­tions, and Wisk is now improp­er­ly attempt­ing to weaponise the legal sys­tem to achieve through bad faith lit­i­ga­tion what it can­not accom­plish through fair com­pe­ti­tion.”

In response to Archer’s update, a Wisk spokesper­son said: “Archer’s fil­ing con­firms the strength of Wisk’s claims, and changes noth­ing about the case – it con­tains no sub­stan­tive response to the alle­ga­tions Archer mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed more than 50 spe­cif­ic Wisk trade secrets, which were dis­closed in a court fil­ing last month and cov­er mul­ti­ple com­po­nents, sys­tems, and designs for the air­craft.

“Telling­ly, Archer can­not deny that thou­sands of files were stolen from Wisk by cur­rent Archer employ­ees, which con­tain con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant to the design Archer has tout­ed. And Archer’s fil­ing has no plau­si­ble expla­na­tion for its devel­op­ment time­line. Wisk brought this suit to pro­tect over a decade of invest­ment, inno­va­tion, and work by Wisk’s tal­ent­ed team, who con­tin­ue to lead the eVTOL indus­try for­ward.

“We believe Archer’s busi­ness is built on Wisk’s intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty as detailed in our fil­ings, and we look for­ward to pro­ceed­ing with our case.”

Archer is cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing its eVTOL air­craft, which has a range of 60 miles trav­el­ling at speeds of 150mph. The com­pa­ny is plan­ning to reveal the full design lat­er this year and has already announced plans to cre­ate urban air mobil­i­ty net­works in Los Ange­les and Mia­mi.

To read the full text of Archer’s Answer and Coun­ter­claims, click here. To read the full text of Archer’s Motion to Dis­miss, click here.