Last week, airplane manufacturer Bombardier filed a complaint against Mitsubishi Aircraft Corporation and former Bombardier employees in the Western District of Washington alleging violations of the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act and the Washington Uniform Trade Secrets Act, tortious interference, and breach of contract. Bombardier claims as trade secrets its designs, testing, and regulatory “certification approach” for obtaining approval from aviation safety agencies, as well as the underlying regulations themselves, which it claims are identified “only after an aircraft manufacturer meets in confidence with certifying authority representatives… to reach agreement on which specific subset of regulations must be satisfied.”

Bombardier alleges its employees were actively recruited to help the defendants obtain regulatory approval for a new line of regional jets, and that several engineers sent confidential Bombardier documents and regulatory certification reports to their personal email accounts in the weeks preceding their departure. Bombardier claims that this information provides invaluable guidance in meeting “innumerable exacting” regulatory standards.

The complaint seeks monetary and punitive damages, as well as injunctions preventing the defendants from using proprietary Bombardier information or recruiting Bombardier personnel.