Bombardier sues Mitsubishi over aircraft trade secrets
According to the Seattle Times, Bombardier filed a lawsuit against Mitsubishi yesterday in Washington State Federal Court.
The 92-page lawsuit alleges that employees who had been recruited by Mitsubishi at Bombardier provided confidential information about the C Series FAA certification process and Transport Canada’s. Before they quit their job with Bombardier, the employees in question used their e-mail address at Bombardier to send confidential documents to personal e-mail addresses and then use them in the certification of the MRJ.
Bombardier alleges that the FAA and EASA certification processes are very expensive and complex while only four new commercial aircraft programs have obtained all regulatory approvals since 2000. The lawsuit does not specify the amount of damages claimed and requires Mitsubishi to cease to use illegally obtained information for MRJ certification.
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This article is quite interesting.
Bombardier hired a lot of engineers from Embraer, Airbus and engineering contractors in Toulouse in 2008 to 2010.
A lot of them had their employment terminated in 2016 when Bombardier initiated the “Global Workforce Optimization”. It initially started in February 2016 with 7,000 job losses. I was part of that first wave of lay-offs.
https://www.bombardier.com/en/media/newsList/details.binc-20160217-bombardier-announces-financial-results-for-the-fou.bombardiercom.html?filter-bu=all&f-year=2016&f-month=all&f-type=all&show-by-page=50&page=4&f-min-year=2002
Several weeks later another wave of lay-offs was announced. The announced total job losses was at 14,500. Just after the first wave of lay-offs, many people had been absolutely horrified because a lot of their “good and experienced” colleagues were kicked out. They knew they could be laid-off at any time.
It was not a surprise for me many engineers decided to leave because they had the sword of Damocles above their head. This does not excuse the theft of any internal document. It is not ethical. That’s it that’s all.
Today, I am wondering if there will another wave of lay-off considering the fact the share price had gone down by more than 30% compared to its peak in July 2018. The share trades at CA$ 3.64 and in July it traded at CA$ 5.43.
Sincerely, I am happy to be in the first wave of lay-offs. At that time there were still many positions in aerospace. Today the situation is much more difficult. There may be some opportunities in the future Embraer-Boeing joint venture or maybe in China or in Russia. Those who moved from Montreal to Nagoya are only one step away from Shanghai.