Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Joby Aero, Inc. and Archer Aviation Inc. are rival developers of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft — the “flying taxi” technology both companies are racing to commercialize. Joby sued Archer and George Kivork, a former Joby employee who left to join Archer, alleging that Kivork downloaded and emailed himself confidential Joby files shortly before resigning and that he and Archer then used or disclosed Joby’s trade secrets. Joby’s claims rest in part on a Proprietary Information and Inventions Agreement (PIIA) Kivork signed as a Joby employee, which included a confidentiality clause, a duty to return company property, and a promise not to compete with Joby during his employment.
Archer countersued, alleging that Joby made false or misleading statements to the federal government — specifically in bids for an Air Force “Agility Prime” program and a White House/FAA integration program — by portraying itself as fully “American-made” and vertically integrated while allegedly downplaying its ties to a wholly owned Chinese subsidiary, Joby China. Archer claimed these representations helped Joby win government funding and contracts that otherwise would have gone to Archer, framing the conduct as false advertising under the Lanham Act and unfair competition under California’s Unfair Competition Law (UCL).
This is the second round of dismissal motions in the case. In June 2026, the court (Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen, who presides with the parties’ consent) issued a prior order partially dismissing the original complaint and counterclaims, including a ruling that the PIIA’s confidentiality clause was an unenforceable de facto non-compete under California Business & Professions Code section 16600. Both sides amended their pleadings, and the court’s September 29, 2026 order resolves three new motions to dismiss the amended pleadings.
The Court’s Holding
On Joby’s claims, the court again held that section 16600 — California’s strong public policy against restraints on lawful employment — invalidates the PIIA’s open-ended confidentiality obligation, so that theory of breach stays dismissed. But a separate PIIA clause restricting Kivork only from competing with Joby during his employment survived, because it does not extend past his employment and therefore does not offend section 16600. The court let Joby’s claim proceed that Kivork breached that during-employment clause by reassigning ownership of Joby’s Google Drive files to his personal email shortly before resigning. On trade secrets, the court found Joby’s amended complaint finally identified its claimed secrets with enough specificity (down to particular files), but held that only the trade secrets tied to a Hawthorne, California airport leasing deal were plausibly misappropriated; other categories were dismissed with one final chance to replead, while a threatened-misappropriation theory survived for all identified secrets. The court also allowed Joby’s inducement-of-breach-of-contract and UCL claims against Archer to proceed, but only to the extent tied to the property-return obligation, where Joby plausibly alleged Archer knew of the clause and acted to induce Kivork’s breach.
Archer’s counterclaims fared far worse: the court dismissed them in their entirety, without leave to amend. The central ruling was that the Noerr-Pennington doctrine — which shields parties from liability for petitioning the government, including petitions for government contracts — barred Archer’s claims because they depend entirely on statements Joby allegedly made to federal agencies while competing for government funding. The court rejected Archer’s arguments that private commercial activity or the “sham petitioning” exception removed the protection, noting Archer never alleged Joby’s statements were made for any purpose other than winning the contracts themselves.
Independently, the court also found Archer’s Lanham Act claim legally deficient: while government-contract pitches can qualify as “commercial advertising or promotion,” Archer’s pleading lacked the particularity and plausible causal link needed to show the alleged misstatements about China actually caused Joby to win the contracts at Archer’s expense. Because Archer’s UCL claims were derivative of the same Lanham Act theory and failed to meet Rule 9(b)’s heightened pleading standard for fraud, those claims fell too. With the counterclaims dismissed on these grounds, the court found it unnecessary to reach Joby’s separate argument that the UCL claim should be struck as a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP).
Key Takeaways
- The Noerr-Pennington doctrine, usually associated with antitrust cases, also shields statements made while petitioning the government for contracts from Lanham Act and state unfair-competition claims brought by a disappointed competitor.
- California Business & Professions Code section 16600 continues to void open-ended post-employment confidentiality and non-compete obligations, but narrower clauses limited to restricting competition only during active employment remain enforceable.
- Trade secret plaintiffs must identify specific documents or information, not broad categories, to survive a motion to dismiss — and even then, each category needs its own plausible facts showing actual or threatened misappropriation.
- To plead inducement of breach of contract against a new employer, a plaintiff must show both that the employer knew of the specific contract term and that it acted, before the breach, in a way designed to bring that breach about.
- Claims this entangled with government-petitioning activity can be dismissed without leave to amend, since no amendment can cure a Noerr-Pennington bar — a useful early-exit tool for defendants facing competitor suits over lobbying or bidding conduct.
Why It Matters
This order is a useful illustration of how two intertwined but legally distinct fights — trade secret and employee-mobility claims on one side, and competitor claims over government contracting conduct on the other — get tested at the pleading stage under very different doctrines. For employment and trade secret practitioners, the ruling reinforces that California’s hostility to non-competes (section 16600) has real teeth against broadly worded confidentiality clauses, while narrower restrictions tied strictly to the employment period can still be enforced, and that trade secret pleadings must get specific fast or face repeated dismissal.
For litigators handling competitor disputes that touch on government contracting or lobbying, the Noerr-Pennington ruling is the headline: a company’s representations to federal agencies while seeking funding or contracts are broadly immunized from Lanham Act and UCL liability, even when a rival claims those representations were false and cost it business. Given the high-profile eVTOL rivalry between Joby and Archer, the decision also signals that courts will dismiss such counterclaims with prejudice rather than let them linger through repeated amendment, making early motion practice especially valuable in similar disputes.