Adcor Defense Wins Beretta Lawsuit
Way back in July 2015, we reported that Adcor Defense had launched a lawsuit against Beretta USA for the use of proprietary information used in the development of the ARX-100. At the time the two companies had entered into an agreement for Adcor to produce components for 100,000 rifles but the deal fell apart and Adcor filed a suit for “damages for breach of contract, unfair competition, fraud, civil conspiracy and other claims.”
A statement from Adcor’s lawyers on 12 December announced that Adcor had won its $20 million action against Beretta USA, here’s the statement in full:
We are pleased to announce that a Baltimore County jury today rendered a 20 million dollar verdict in a commercial litigation matter, Adcor Defense, Inc. v Beretta, USA, Inc.
The matter in dispute was the defendant’s willful misappropriation of Adcor’s cutting edge design of a modern AR-15 rifle. Adcor is a local Baltimore City aerospace manufacturing company. In 2008, Adcor undertook the redesign of the common AR-15 rifle in an effort to better improve the weapon to benefit our troops overseas.
Beretta USA engaged Adcor with a promise to co-develop Adcor’s outstanding developments in the AR-15. Beretta, USA, is a subsidiary of Beretta Holdings, the oldest and one of largest and most successful firearms manufacturers in the world. Beretta signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement promising to keep all of Adcor’s information confidential and not to keep, use or disseminate it.
At trial, it was proven that Beretta intentionally schemed to misappropriate all of Adcor’s innovative technology and never intended to abide by the Non-Disclosure Agreement. The Jury found that Beretta willfully violated the Non-Disclosure Agreement and took and used Adcor’s innovative technology for its own benefit and for the benefit of its sister companies.
The case was tried by Briggs Bedigian, Jon Stefanuca and Lauren Bell of Gilman and Bedigian, LLC, a local law firm located in Timonium, as well as Thomas Donnelly and Kristin Tracy of The Law Offices of Thomas Donnelly, LLC, located in Baltimore City. Beretta, USA, was represented by attorneys from the national law firm of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, LLP, led by T. Sky Woodward of the Washington, DC office.
Managing Editor: TheFirearmBlog.com & Overt Defense.com. Matt is a British historian specialising in small arms development and military history. He has written several books and for a variety of publications in both the US and UK. Matt is also runs The Armourer's Bench, a video series on historically significant small arms. Here on TFB he covers product and current military small arms news. Reach Matt at: matt@thefirearmblog.com
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Now all we need is for Steyr to win its suit against Sig...
From the video provided below, and if the information from the sales pitch that was given is true, it looks like ADCOR has some pretty difficult manufacturing problems solved with the metals and machining, including going back to aircraft quality aluminum in their process. I'm impressed, but I'd still rather see an improved AR - 18 design, as that was my favorite semi-auto 5.56mm rifle. For one thing a forged aluminum receiver can't be beat, and I didn't like that tin receiver the AR-180 had. I realize that was a decision made by the Costa Mesa office because of the manufacturing cost of the day, but times move on.