Archer sues Vertical Aerospace over Alleged Design Patent Infringement for its Midnight eVTOL aircraft

Archer Avi­a­tion has filed a patent infringe­ment com­plaint in the East­ern Dis­trict of Texas against Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, say­ing Ver­ti­cal has alleged­ly infringed at least two design patents for Archer’s Mid­night air­craft.

The suit, which was filed yes­ter­day (Tues­day), says the patents pro­tect the unique visu­al iden­ti­ty of Midnight’s V‑tail, fuse­lage and wing con­fig­u­ra­tions.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the suit says Vertical’s Valo air­craft, unveiled in Decem­ber 2025, alleged­ly infringes on one of Archer’s util­i­ty patents which cov­ers crit­i­cal flight con­trol sys­tems and ‘con­trol allo­ca­tion’ meth­ods used to man­age elec­tric propul­sion units and bat­tery pow­er on its tilt­ing archi­tec­ture.

A quote from the fil­ing said: “Ver­ti­cal has know­ing­ly, will­ful­ly, and in reck­less dis­re­gard lever­aged and exploit­ed the sub­stan­tial good­will and rep­u­ta­tion asso­ci­at­ed with Archer’s patent­ed designs.

“Vertical’s infringe­ment is read­i­ly appar­ent from a visu­al com­par­i­son of the over­all appear­ance of the Valo to Archer’s patent­ed designs.”

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has been in Mia­mi this week as part of a two-day pub­lic road­show to show­case Valo in North Amer­i­ca. A sim­i­lar pub­lic event was held in New York back in Jan­u­ary.

Soon after the news from Archer sur­faced, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space pro­vid­ed its own state­ment in response.

The com­pa­ny said: “Archer’s recent claims are with­out mer­it, and Ver­ti­cal intends to defend those claims
vig­or­ous­ly. Ver­ti­cal has devel­oped a robust air­craft design with a clear path to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, under­pinned by Vertical’s pro­pri­etary and mar­ket-lead­ing tech­nol­o­gy and inter­na­tion­al IP port­fo­lio.

“Archer’s claims are mere­ly an attempt to dis­tract from the chal­lenges Archer is fac­ing com­pet­ing in the mar­ket­place.”

Domh­nal Slat­tery, Chair­man at Ver­ti­cal Aero­space, added: “Vertical’s air­craft archi­tec­ture, pro­pri­etary tech­nol­o­gy stack and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion path­way have been inde­pen­dent­ly devel­oped over many years and are pro­tect­ed by a robust port­fo­lio of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights.

“Our focus remains firm­ly on exe­cu­tion and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. That is where sus­tain­able val­ue is cre­at­ed — and that is where we are lead­ing.”