Joby challenges $117 million trade secrets verdict over aircraft sensors

Joby Aviation has filed a motion asking a federal court to set aside a jury award of almost $117 million in favour of Aerosonic, a supplier of aircraft probes. The electric air taxi developer says it designed and manufactured its own air data system without making unauthorised use of the supplier's confidential information.

Jurors in Tampa, Florida, decided on 2 October 2026 that Joby had broken a confidentiality agreement and misused Aerosonic's trade secrets. The verdict does not yet amount to a final judgment. Damages were awarded for the breach and the trade secret claims, and the jury added punitive damages on top.

In a statement to media outlets, Joby said it disagreed strongly with the outcome, calling the verdict unsupported by the evidence and at odds with the law. The company said it would continue to contest the matter in court and would appeal if that became necessary. It says it spent years on the engineering and production of the system.

Aerosonic, a Clearwater, Florida-based subsidiary of TransDigm, supplies probes that read air pressure around an aircraft, data used to work out airspeed, altitude and angle of attack. It began providing probes for Joby's flight-test aircraft in April 2022, after the two companies signed a nondisclosure agreement in September 2021. According to its complaint, Aerosonic was approached shortly after the first delivery about selling the intellectual property rights to the probes, and it declined.

The supplier alleges Joby then set about designing its own probes while still seeking confidential engineering information from Aerosonic. Aerosonic sued in March 2025 over the use of its designs and test data, and claims its information let Joby develop the probes in roughly two years instead of the decade or more the work would otherwise have taken. Joby maintains the development was independent.

Joby is building an electric air taxi that carries one pilot and four passengers, with plans to start passenger flights in Dubai before the end of 2026.