The Artemis 1 mission Space Launch System (SLS) rocket
Frank Michaux / NASA
Wilson Aerospace, a small, family-owned tool company based in Colorado, is suing Boeing for a wide variety of claims related to allegedly stolen intellectual property over the past two decades.
The company’s lawsuit revolves around several custom tools Wilson says he made for Boeing. Boeing, in turn, “rewarded Wilson’s efforts by brazenly stealing the IP address of multiple devices,” the complaint said. Wilson filed a lawsuit Wednesday in a federal court in Washington.
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The extent of the damage is “difficult to quantify,” said one of the company’s lawyers, Pete Flowers. Still, Boeing’s actions hurt Wilson for “hundreds of millions of dollars,” he told CNBC.
Wilson’s complaint alleges that his tools — used on NASA projects including the International Space Station and its Space Launch Systems lunar rocket — have helped Boeing win billions in contract awards and government fees. Wilson also claims that the counterfeit version of the tools Boeing created led to leaks in the ISS and SLS – and “put lives at risk”, including the lives of astronauts.
The company has filed ten claims against Boeing, including claims of copyright infringement, misappropriation and theft of trade secrets, and fraud.
In a statement to CNBC, a Boeing spokesperson said Wilson’s “lawsuit is riddled with inaccuracies and omissions,” but declined to share details when asked.
“We will vigorously defend this in court,” Boeing said.
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Led by David Wilson, who founded the eponymous company in 1999, the Colorado-based company invents specialty aerospace tools such as the “Fluid Fitting Torque Device,” or FFTD, used to tighten and loosen fittings such as those in “cramped, hard-to-access areas on spacecraft.” Wilson developed variations of FFTD, as well as other tools and assemblies, for use on the ISS, the Space Shuttle-era experimental module SPACEHAB, as well as Boeing’s Starliner capsule and Dreamliner aircraft.
At the center of the lawsuit is the work Wilson did for Boeing from 2014 to 2016 to use an FFTD product to solve a problem involving the rocket’s engines being powered to SLS “with the precise amount of torque”. confirmed. Wilson claims the aerospace giant downloaded proprietary information, cut communications with the company, and built “counterfeit” variations that Boeing passed off to NASA as proprietary information.
“While Boeing has paid Wilson for some of his work over the years, Boeing’s primary approach has been to steal Wilson’s intellectual property through deception and other illegal means, rather than compensation,” the suit alleges.
In addition, the alleged theft resulted in mismatched components and “inferior products”. According to the complaint, “the mismatched tools have caused some fluid leaks that have continually delayed the launch of the SLS, costing NASA hundreds of millions of dollars and unfairly enriching Boeing.”
The 74-page complaint cites correspondence with multiple Boeing employees, including one who emailed in September 2020 that Boeing misused Wilson’s IP address and “caused a security issue for orbiting hardware.” Among those alleged counterfeit tools, another of Wilson’s lawyers, Lance Astrella, told CNBC that an earlier variant of FFTD is believed to be stuck on the ISS after getting stuck due to Boeing using incorrect calibration data after copying the tool.
Wilson pointed to past lawsuits as examples of “a broader pattern of criminal behavior by Boeing,” such as theft of Lockheed Martin trade secrets in 2006.
“We are fully convinced that there are other companies, probably small US companies, that have been affected by the same activity within Boeing,” Wilson attorney Flowers told CNBC.
Read the full copy of Wilson’s complaint below:
