Essentium
Essentium HSE
Essentium's High Speed Extrusion machine.
Jabil has filed a trade secrets lawsuit against 3D printing hardware and materials company Essentium relating to the commercialisation of its High Speed Extrusion platform.
The global contract manufacturer claims three former employees and one former contractor ‘stole Jabil’s trade secrets and capitalised on confidential information that Jabil invested thousands of hours over a period of years and millions of dollars to develop’ and took them to Essentium, which would be a violation of signed confidentially agreements.
Erik Gjovik, Greg Ojeda, William Jack ‘Terry’ MacNeish III (the former Jabil employees who all live in California) and Lars Uffhausen (the former contractor who resides in New Jersey) all helped to establish Essentium in its printing hardware endeavours and are credited as co-founders. Three of them remain at the company, while Ojeda is now founder and CEO of RapidNPI in Los Angeles.
Jabil says that while it was developing a printing system called ‘TenX’, so named because of its ability to print parts at speeds ten times greater than competitors, Gjovik, Ojeda and MacNeish had travelled to Jabil HQ to work on the project ‘more than once’. The company believes the three men represented Jabil in discussions with Essentium (at the time called Essentium Materials) around the possibility of a partnership with the Texas-based firm which could see it licensing the technology. These negotiations came to nothing, but MacNeish went on to join Essentium Materials in September 2017, as did Uffhausen, and Gjovik and Ojeda both followed before the end of the year. By November 2018, Essentium had launched its High Speed Extrusion system, which Jabil claims has been developed off the back of its designs and trade secrets.
The defendants have also been accused of planning to set up their own ‘spin off’ company as early as 2016; using private emails and document storage to store Jabil designs; ‘poaching’ vendors that Jabil had prior relations with; using company credit cards to purchase components for their ‘competing endeavours’; and trying to persuade another Jabil colleague to join their new company.
"As a global leader in additive manufacturing, Jabil is committed to protecting our intellectual property in our cutting-edge 3D printer innovations," a Jabil statement reads. "The misappropriation of our confidential designs, vendor relationships, and other trade secrets by these former employees alleged in the lawsuit necessitated Jabil to protect our substantial investment."
Meanwhile, Essentium has posted a written statement on its website signed by Chairman of the Board Steve Birdwell. It reads:
"I wanted to acknowledge a development that has recently been in the media; and to take this opportunity to assure you of our position.
"Jabil has filed a lawsuit against Essentium and four of our co-founders. This action is entirely without merit, and we are responding to it aggressively. Our corporate values are based around trust, service, transparency, and innovation. We have never detracted from these values.
"Since our inception, Essentium has been disrupting traditional manufacturing processes. In partnership with our customers, partners, and our own supply chain, we are transforming the future of industrial-scale manufacturing. Together we are breaking down barriers of scale, strength, and economics in additive manufacturing.
"Nothing will distract us from this work."
