Boeing interfered with electric plane startup Zunum, appeals court finds
Aug. 15, 2025 at 3:52 pm
An artist’s rendering from 2018 of Zunum’s concept hybrid-electric commuter airplanes. (Courtesy of Zunum Aero)
By
Lauren Rosenblatt
Seattle Times business reporter
Boeing may again be on the hook for allegedly stealing trade secrets from Bothell-based electric airplane startup Zunum Aero.
Zunum, which folded in 2019, sued Boeing a year after its closure, accusing the plane manufacturer of using its position as an investor to steal the startup’s designs and dissuade other groups from investing, preventing Zunum from gaining a foothold in the aerospace industry.
A Seattle jury ruled against Boeing in 2024, determining that Boeing had misappropriated Zunum’s trade secrets and breached its contract with the startup. But a federal judge reversed that verdict just two months later, clearing the jet-maker of all charges.
On Thursday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision yet again, reinstating a $72 million verdict against Boeing. The appeals court remanded the case back to the district court to finalize the verdict.
The appeals court found that Zunum introduced substantial evidence at trial that could lead the jury to conclude Boeing had interfered with the startup’s business prospects and that the jet-maker had discussed using Zunum’s information for its own hybrid electric plane project.
The three-judge appeals court panel also found that federal District Judge James Robart failed to disclose that his wife had acquired Boeing stock during the course of the litigation. The appeals court assigned the case to a new district judge.
The latest ruling “affirms what we have said from the start — that Zunum had an enormous opportunity to remake air travel, but Boeing took that opportunity away,” said Vincent Levy, an attorney with Holwell, Shuster and Goldberg, who is representing the startup. “The decision fully restores the jury’s verdict, vindicating Zunum’s hard-fought efforts to protect its groundbreaking technology.”
Boeing declined to comment on the litigation. Robart could not immediately be reached for comment.
Zunum Aero, founded in 2013 by Ashish Kumar and Matt Knapp, was working to develop a small hybrid-electric airplane that would fly short-hop routes around the country. It hoped to lower the cost and environmental impact of those short flights.
The startup had venture capital funding from Boeing’s HorizonX and JetBlue’s investment arm, and received an $800,000 grant from Washington state’s Clean Energy Fund.
But Zunum ran out of money in 2019 and shut down most of its operations. According to the company’s website, it has paused “most developmental activities” and stored its hardware at leased facilities in Washington and Indiana. Zunum used less than a third of the Washington Clean Energy Fund grant before it folded.
In 2020, Zunum sued Boeing in King County Superior Court and accused its former investment partner of a “targeted and coordinated campaign” to access the startup’s proprietary information, intellectual property and trade secrets. Zunum alleged that Boeing copied the startup’s plans, designs and technologies for its own hybrid electric project.
Boeing, in court documents, denied Zunum’s allegations. It said the startup’s failure was due to mismanagement and “lack (of) a realistic business plan.”
Boeing had developed a “conceptual mock-up” to evaluate the feasibility of Zunum’s proposed plane, the company said in court records, and concluded that the hybrid-electric aircraft would not be economically viable for commercial flight anytime soon.
After an eight-day trial, a jury sided with Zunum in June 2024 and awarded $72 million in damages to the startup.
In August 2024, Judge Robart overturned that verdict and found that Zunum failed to provide substantial evidence that its alleged trade secrets were, in fact, trade secrets and failed to show that Boeing’s actions had caused harm.
Nearly a year later, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals determined Thursday that Robart had overlooked relevant evidence introduced at trial.
That evidence included Boeing’s internal communications that suggest the plane-maker “intended to modify its own in-house designs, methods and strategies” with information from Zunum, according to court records, as well as evidence that showed Boeing employees discussed the difficulty of replicating Zunum’s technology.
“The jury could have reasonably concluded that Boeing improperly used Zunum’s trade secrets for competitive purposes,” the ruling read.
Furthermore, “the jury could have reasonably determined that Boeing’s misuse of Zunum’s confidential information destroyed Zunum’s competitive advantage, which caused Zunum to lose future investment and partnership opportunities,” the ruling continued.
It pointed specifically to a proposed partnership between Zunum and French aerospace company Safran.
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The appeals court reversed the district court’s decision to grant a new trial and assigned the case to a new judge.
It found that Robart’s wife had twice acquired Boeing stock through an IRA during the course of this litigation. Robart learned of the stock purchases in May and June 2023 but did not disclose the transactions until September 2024, one day before entering the final judgment in Boeing’s favor, the appeals court wrote.
In the days after Robart’s decision in favor of Boeing was first publicized in August 2024, Boeing’s stock rose about $10, from $169 per share to $179. That was also one week after Boeing’s new CEO Kelly Ortberg started on the job, replacing embattled CEO Dave Calhoun.
In its Thursday ruling, the appeals court said Robart’s “delayed disclosure, taken together with the district court’s consistent rulings in Boeing’s favor during and after trial, could give an objective observer reason to question the district judge’s impartiality in further proceedings.”
This story includes information from The Seattle Times’ archives.
Lauren Rosenblatt: 206-464-2927 or lrosenblatt@seattletimes.com. Lauren Rosenblatt is a Seattle Times business reporter covering Boeing and the aerospace industry.
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