Aviation Partners founder/CEO responds to Airbus lawsuit

SEATTLE, 14 Dec. 2011. Joe Clark, founder and chief executive officer of Aviation Partners Inc. in Seattle, has released a statement on a lawsuit filed by Airbus. Airbus officials seek a ruling that its winglets do not infringe on Aviation Partners’ winglets, and associated patents and intellectual property.

Clark states: "We are certainly surprised by the lawsuit attempting to invalidate our patent on Blended Winglets after working closely with Airbus over the past five years. We have had many meetings with their engineering group and top executives, both in America and Europe. We have built and flown patented Blended Winglets on the Airbus A320 in Toulouse. We have flown them on one of JetBlue's A320s using JetBlue flight crews with excellent results achieved–a 5 percent fuel savings–all of this with the cooperation of Airbus.

"What I can tell you is that we will vigorously protect our patented technology and intellectual property, which is currently saving the world billions of gallons of fuel on Boeing, Dassault, Hawker, and Gulfstream airplanes.

"This is all about efficiency. We want to get our Blended Winglet technology on as many airplanes as possible to save as much fuel as possible. We are just trying to do our part in a changing world."