This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on aviation, air taxis, and Wi-Fi speeds at 30,000 feet, follow Andrew J. Hawkins. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.

These tiffs are taking place less than two years after Archer supposedly settled its dispute with Boeing-backed Wisk Aero over the alleged theft of trade secrets — only to see the case reopened when Wisk asked the court for help enforcing the terms of the settlement.

These heated courtroom battles are unfolding at a precarious time for the air taxi industry, right as it’s trying to position its technology as an important new mode of urban mobility with the ability to whisk passengers across cities without any of the noise or carbon pollution of a traditional helicopter.

Despite these promises, the industry is experiencing a lot of ups and downs. Air taxi stocks have lost most of their value over the last several years as certification deadlines get pushed further and further out. Budgets are dwindling as timelines are getting longer. And investors, already wary about the industry’s ability to win regulatory approval, are growing increasingly nervous about the enormous costs required by these lawsuits.

As companies race to dominate a brand-new, potentially multibillion-dollar aviation industry, these disputes over intellectual property, competition, and talent are triggering an aggressive wave of litigation that could make it even more difficult for the electric air taxi industry to inevitably get off the ground.

Located only an hour from each other across the San Francisco Bay Area, Joby and Archer have become bitter rivals in the race to become the Uber of the sky. In the past year, they’ve become entangled in a series of suits and countersuits that take jabs at their products and progress.

In a suit filed in November 2025, Joby accused Archer of corporate espionage, citing a former Joby employee who left to work for Archer. Joby alleges that the former employee stole technical information and stakeholder communications in order to provide them to his new employer. “Archer brazenly used that stolen information,” Joby claims in its complaint.

In March of this year, Archer clapped back, accusing Joby of defrauding the US government by misclassifying components imported from China. The plan, Archer claimed, included classifying China aircraft parts as consumer goods such as “hair clips” and “socks.” The countersuit appears to have paid off; a month later, the International Trade Commission opened an investigation into Joby’s ties to China, examining whether the company violated tariff or patent law. The ongoing investigation could delay Joby’s plans to launch an air taxi service by 2028.

But Joby isn’t the only rival in Archer’s crosshairs. In February, Archer filed a lawsuit against UK-based Vertical Aerospace, accusing it of ripping off its eVTOL designs. Archer’s Midnight and Vertical’s Valo are both four-passenger aircraft with electric motors and tilt-rotor propellers designed for vertical takeoff and landing. Both have a cruising speed of 150mph and a maximum range of 100 miles.

“It’s obvious that Vertical’s Valo aircraft mimics many of Midnight’s most distinctive design features,” Eric Lentell, Archer’s chief strategy and legal officer, said in a statement to The Verge. Vertical Aerospace spokesperson Justin Bates said that Archer’s claims were “without merit” and a “distraction” from the company’s challenges in the market.

No air taxi company has fully completed the rigorous FAA type certification required to fly passengers commercially in the US. But both Joby and Archer claim they are close.

Joby is widely considered to be the front-runner, having progressed through all four stages of the type certification process. The company produces around one aircraft a month and is currently working on a production version that will undergo the FAA’s certification process. In April, Joby demonstrated one of its aircraft flying from JFK Airport to Lower Manhattan as a preview of future air taxi routes. The company plans on launching its first passenger service in Dubai, where certification requirements are less strict than in the US, later this year.

Archer, meanwhile, is still working on a pre-production model and has progressed through three of the four type certification stages. The company has said it will be ready for passengers in time for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

But investors have been less than impressed with the companies’ claims of being on the cusp of commercial viability. At the time of publication, Joby’s stock has shed almost 35 percent of its value since the beginning of the year, while Archer’s stock has plummeted nearly 33 percent.

There’s so much at stake, it’s no surprise these companies are using their legal teams to blast each other out of the sky. The talent pool is small, so disputes over trade secrets and corporate espionage were in some ways inevitable. And because FAA certification is an absolute necessity for a future air taxi service, regulatory compliance became another line of attack.

But these lawsuits are also sending a message to investors, to regulators, and to potential future passengers: Buckle up, because there’s turbulence ahead.