Wisk suing Archer Aviation for theft of trade secrets and patent infringement of its eVTOL aircraft designs

Wisk is tak­ing legal action against eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er Archer Avi­a­tion, alleg­ing Archer’s busi­ness is ‘built on intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty that is not its own’ and brings claims for trade secret mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion and patent infringe­ment. 

Accord­ing to the fil­ing sent to the fed­er­al court in the North­ern Dis­trict of Cal­i­for­nia, the law­suit fol­lows Wisk’s dis­cov­ery of sus­pi­cious file down­loads by for­mer employ­ees 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.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Wisk has said Archer’s recent dis­clo­sure of an air­craft design appears to be a copy of a design it devel­oped and sub­mit­ted in a con­fi­den­tial patent appli­ca­tion to the U.S. Patent and Trade­mark Office in Jan­u­ary 2020.

The copied design includes six front rotors that each con­sist of five blades and can tilt to be posi­tioned either hor­i­zon­tal­ly or ver­ti­cal­ly, as well as six rear rotors that each con­sist of two blades and remain fixed in a ver­ti­cal posi­tion. The design also includes an uncon­ven­tion­al ‘V’ tail.

Archer’s air­craft dis­clo­sure was made in con­nec­tion with its plan to merge with Atlas Crest Cor­po­ra­tion, fol­low­ing its joint SPAC merg­er ear­li­er this year.

In a blog post by Wisk, which is dat­ed April 6th, it said: “We believe the growth of cred­i­ble eVTOL play­ers push­es the Urban Air Mobility/Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty indus­try for­ward by spurring inno­va­tion, advanc­ing safe­ty and com­mer­cial­iza­tion, and cre­at­ing a healthy and com­pet­i­tive mar­ket­place.

“It has tak­en tremen­dous time, invest­ment, enor­mous resources, and indus­try-wide col­lab­o­ra­tion to cre­ate a foun­da­tion from which the indus­try can build trust with the pub­lic, the broad­er avi­a­tion indus­try, reg­u­la­tors, and pol­i­cy mak­ers.

“High-integri­ty play­ers that pur­sue devel­op­ment respon­si­bly, in an envi­ron­ment of healthy, respect­ful com­pe­ti­tion, is crit­i­cal to build­ing this trust and to the ulti­mate suc­cess of the UAM/AAM indus­try. For these rea­sons, we wel­come all respon­si­ble inno­va­tion and fair com­pe­ti­tion in the eVTOL mar­ket. 

“Unfor­tu­nate­ly, and as dis­cussed in the Com­plaint we filed ear­li­er today, it appears that Archer Avi­a­tion, a new entrant in the eVTOL mar­ket, is seek­ing to gain a foothold in this indus­try with­out respect­ing the rules of fair com­pe­ti­tion. As detailed in the Com­plaint, we have dis­cov­ered sig­nif­i­cant and trou­bling evi­dence indi­cat­ing that Archer has been using Wisk’s pro­pri­etary intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty with­out our per­mis­sion.

“Among oth­er things, we dis­cov­ered the mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of thou­sands of high­ly con­fi­den­tial files con­tain­ing very valu­able trade secrets, as well as the use of sig­nif­i­cant inno­va­tions Wisk has patent­ed. Wisk’s con­fi­den­tial, pro­pri­etary trade secrets and patent­ed inno­va­tions rep­re­sent the hard work and ded­i­ca­tion of hun­dreds of Wisk’s engi­neers over mul­ti­ple years.

“We took legal action to ask a fed­er­al court to stop Archer from using that stolen Wisk tech­nol­o­gy and from infring­ing our patents. This isn’t a step we want­ed to take, but we must pro­tect our IP and the decade’s worth of work and inno­va­tion we’ve put into Wisk.”

Co-found­ed by Adam Gold­stein and Brett Adcock, Archer entered the eVTOL air­craft mar­ket in the mid­dle of last year. As well as bring­ing in team mem­bers from Wisk, it also brought in expe­ri­ence from the likes of Air­bus and Joby Avi­a­tion.

Archer will unveil its first eVTOL air­craft lat­er this year, which will be capa­ble of trav­el­ling 60 miles at speeds of 150mph. It plans to begin air­craft pro­duc­tion by 2023, with the first flights start­ing a year lat­er.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the com­pa­ny has con­firmed Los Ange­les and Mia­mi as its first urban air mobil­i­ty net­works in the USA and brought Uber Ele­vate co-founders Mark Moore and Nikhil Goel onto its Advi­so­ry Board.

In response to Wisk’s alle­ga­tions, a spokesper­son for Archer said: “It’s regret­table that Wisk would engage in lit­i­ga­tion in an attempt to deflect from the busi­ness issues that have caused sev­er­al of its employ­ees to depart. The plain­tiff raised these mat­ters over a year ago, and after look­ing into them thor­ough­ly, we have no rea­son to believe any pro­pri­etary Wisk tech­nol­o­gy ever made its way to Archer.  We intend to defend our­selves vig­or­ous­ly.”  

“Archer has placed an employ­ee on paid admin­is­tra­tive leave in con­nec­tion with a gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tion and a search war­rant issued to the employ­ee, which we believe are focused on con­duct pri­or to the employ­ee join­ing the Com­pa­ny.  Archer and three oth­er Archer employ­ees with whom the indi­vid­ual worked also have received sub­poe­nas relat­ing to this inves­ti­ga­tion, and all are ful­ly coop­er­at­ing with the author­i­ties.”