Archer hits back and alleges Wisk copied its eVTOL design in latest update to ongoing lawsuit

In the lat­est update sur­round­ing its ongo­ing law­suit with Wisk Aero, Archer Avi­a­tion has claimed Wisk filed its air­craft design patent appli­ca­tion just weeks after learn­ing of Archer’s own design.

A fil­ing sub­mis­sion sub­mit­ted last week by Archer says Wisk’s chief Engi­neer learned of its air­craft design dur­ing a recruit­ing meet­ing in Decem­ber 2019 and shared the infor­ma­tion with senior exec­u­tives at Wisk. Weeks lat­er, the com­pa­ny filed a patent appli­ca­tion for an air­craft design which appeared sim­i­lar to the one described to him by exec­u­tives at Archer.

Attor­neys from Archer made the accu­sa­tion in oppo­si­tion to Wisk’s request for a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion, which intends to stop Archer from using its con­fi­den­tial trade secrets ahead of a tri­al. The oppo­si­tion added that Wisk’s request­ed injunc­tion is ‘so ill-defined and over­broad that it effec­tive­ly would shut down Archer’s air­craft devel­op­ment, with poten­tial­ly cat­a­stroph­ic effects…’

Archer announced a joint SPAC merg­er with Atlas Invest­ment Corp. ear­li­er this year and if the pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion was grant­ed, it would threat­en the busi­ness deal with Archer set to poten­tial­ly lose $1.1 bil­lion in gross pro­ceeds.

It stems from a recruit­ing meet­ing that Archer co-founders Brett Adcock and Adam Gold­stein had with Wisk’s senior engi­neer Geoff Long.

Adcock and Gold­stein told Long about their plans for the com­pa­ny’s eVTOL air­craft, which includ­ed work­ing with Flight­house on a fixed-wing air­craft with a 12-rotor tilt­ing design. They also told Long they were con­sid­er­ing hav­ing two or six tilt­ing rotors.

A few days lat­er, Long spoke to Wisk CEO Gary Gysin and Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer Jim Tighe about Archer’s air­craft design and that it was work­ing with a third-par­ty con­sul­tant. Wisk then sub­mit­ted its patent appli­ca­tion on Jan­u­ary 31st, 2020.

The pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion was sub­mit­ted fol­low­ing Wisk’s dis­cov­ery of sus­pi­cious file down­loads by for­mer employ­ee Jing Xue, who left the com­pa­ny to work for Archer — includ­ing thou­sands of files relat­ed to Wisk’s con­fi­den­tial air­craft, com­po­nent and sys­tems designs, man­u­fac­tur­ing and test data.

Archer says how­ev­er that the day after the motion was filed, it car­ried out its own inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion to iden­ti­fy any Wisk con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion on its sys­tems, say­ing: “There were zero hits among the 851 doc­u­ments Wisk claims Xue down­loaded and sup­port Wisk’s trade secrets.”

Zero hits were also report­ed on ‘near dupli­cate files’ and Archer even request­ed the FBI pro­vide an image of Xue’s lap­top that had been seized to search for Wisk’s files. Xue has denied under oath that he has sup­plied doc­u­ments of con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion to any employ­er at Archer, and Archer has asked the court to deny Wisk’s request for a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion.

A spokesper­son for Wisk said: “Archer’s lat­est fil­ing is full of inac­cu­ra­cies and attempts to dis­tract from the seri­ous and broad scope of mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion claims it faces.  The fil­ing changes noth­ing. We look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing our case in court to demon­strate Archer’s improp­er use of Wisk’s intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty.”

You can read Wisk’s blog on why it has tak­en legal action against Archer by click­ing here.