Joby Aviation has sued competing air taxi developer Archer Aviation and one of its employees for allegedly stealing trade secrets and using those secrets to undermine a real estate deal involving to air taxi landing sites.
Santa Cruz, California-based Joby filed the suit on 19 November in Superior Court of California. It seeks monetary damages as determined at trial.
Archer, based in San Jose, California, denies the allegations, which involve a former Joby employee who last summer left Joby to take a position with Archer.
That employee, George Kivork, had been Joby’s state and local policy lead, a position in which he accessed confidential Joby information related to technology, partnerships and regulatory strategies, the lawsuit says.
On 20 July, Kivork told Joby he was resigning to work at Archer.
“Two days before announcing his resignation, Kivork exfiltrated a cache of highly valuable Joby files,” the lawsuit alleges. “The files Kivork stole also contained highly valuable trade secret information about Joby’s aircraft and operations, business and regulatory strategy, infrastructure strategy and site analysis for potential vertiports and airport access.”
Three weeks later, Joby learned that one of its partner companies – a real estate developer – had been contacted by Archer, according to the suit. Joby’s deal with the developer granted it rights to design, build and operate air taxi “skydecks” at the developer’s properties.
But now Archer was seeking a deal with the developer, and doing so “with detailed knowledge about the confidential terms” of the developer’s agreement with Joby, the lawsuit says.
Archer offered the developer a “more-lucrative deal”. The developer responded by seeking to cancel its agreement with Joby, citing violation by Joby, via Kivork, of contractual confidentiality terms.
“Archer brazenly used that stolen information to interfere with Joby’s exclusive strategic partnership”, Joby alleges.
Archer insists the lawsuit lacks merit.
“Archer has no deal with this developer and Mr Kivork did not bring any Joby confidential information to Archer,” says that company’s chief legal officer Eric Lentell. “Joby knows these facts and is now improperly attempting to achieve through bad faith litigation what it cannot accomplish through fair competition.”
Asked to comment, Joby says, “The complaint explains that this behaviour left Joby with no choice but to bring this action to protect its confidential and proprietary information.”
