A federal court in Northern California has allowed part of Joby Aviation’s trade secret case against Archer Aviation and former Joby employee George Kivork to continue. In an order issued Friday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Van Keulen dismissed Archer’s counterclaims and also narrowed several of Joby’s claims. Archer was granted leave to amend its counterclaims.
Trade Secret Claim Moves Forward
The court said Joby adequately pleaded a Defend Trade Secrets Act claim involving a confidential real estate developer agreement. Joby alleges that Kivork downloaded relevant files before he left the company to start a new role at Archer. It alleges that Archer then approached the same developer to propose a new deal that reflected confidential terms from Joby’s agreement.
The court dismissed Joby’s trade secret claim as to other categories of alleged information, including certain commercial, regulatory, technical and infrastructure materials, but allowed Joby to amend those allegations.
“We are pleased and not surprised that Joby’s core trade secret claims against Archer and Mr. Kivork will move forward, while Archer’s counterclaims were dismissed in full,” Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel, who represents Joby, said. “Archer’s ludicrous and defamatory counterclaims were nothing more than a baseless attempt to distract from Joby’s trade secret misappropriation case proceeding against Archer.”
Archer May Amend
Archer’s counterclaims alleged Joby misrepresented the source of some of its aircraft materials and concealed ties to China. The court dismissed the counterclaims and said they did not meet the particularity standard required for fraud-based allegations. Archer may amend the counterclaims by June 29, and Joby may amend its complaint by June 22, according to the order.
Archer has previously denied Joby’s original allegations.
“Joby alleges we used their trade secrets to win a ‘deal’ with a developer, but the reality is that Archer has no deal with this developer and Mr. Kivork did not bring any Joby confidential information to Archer,” Eric Lentell, Archer’s chief legal and strategy officer, previously told AVweb in November. “Joby knows these facts and is now improperly attempting to achieve through bad faith litigation what it cannot accomplish through fair competition. Archer remains focused on building the future of advanced aviation in America.”
Archer has not responded to request for comment on the most recent court actions.
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