An air taxi startup backed by Google co-founder Larry Page has initiated legal battles with one of its main rivals. The startup, Wisk Aero, is suing rival Archer Aviation, which’s on its way to the public markets through a SPAC merger.

Wisk Aero, a joint venture between aerospace giant Boeing and Larry Page’s air taxi startup Kitty Hawk, is accusing Archer of intellectual property theft facilitated by former employees who left Wisk to work for the company. 

• Wisk alleges that certain former employees that previously worked for the company before heading to Archer downloaded thousands of files related to its confidential aircraft designs, component designs, system designs, manufacturing, and test data.

• To make its case, Wisk has centered on an aircraft design recently unveiled by Archer which’s strikingly similar to a design that it developed and submitted in a confidential patent application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office back in January 2020. It’s shown in the image below;

• “Wisk brings this lawsuit to stop a brazen theft of its intellectual property and confidential information, and protect the substantial investment of resources and years of hard work and effort of its employees and their vision of the future in urban air transportation,” the company said in a statement.

• Wisk’s lawsuit against Archer was filed in a federal court in the Northern District of California. The major accusations are of trade secret misappropriation and patent infringement.

• Notably, the lawsuit against Archer comes as the company is preparing to go public by merging with a special-purpose acquisition company, Atlas Crest Investment Corp. The SPAC merger values Archer at $3.8 billion.

• In the wake of Wisk’s allegations, Archer disclosed that it has been served a subpoena as part of a government investigation. Additionally, four of its employees have been served with subpoenas in connection with the investigation.

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