Just a few weeks ago, Jawbone hit Fitbit with a lawsuit here in the US. Now Jawbone is going after their competitor again with another lawsuit which is in regards to patent infringement. Jawbone states that Fitbit infringed on a patent regarding “a wellness application using data from a data-capable band.” Sounds like something every fitness tracker is doing, right? Even Android Wear. Fitbit is preparing to go public on the stock market, so these lawsuits are not good for Fitbit. Although they aren’t good for any company, whether public or not.
As one would expect, Fitbit denies any wrongdoing. The company told the Wall Street Journal “Fitbit has no need to take information from Jawbone or any other company.” They continued “We are unaware of any confidential or proprietary information of Jawbone in our possession and we intend to vigorously defend against these allegations.”
If that patent in question from Jawbone is really the entire story, then that’s almost as bad as Apple’s patent for having a smartphone shape of a rectangle with rounded corners. There should be some other technical details in that patent though, that we’ll need to look into.
Jawbone just recently announced their Up4 just shortly after the Up3. Which can’t be good for sales, especially seeing as the only real update to the Up4 in comparison to the Up3 is allowing it to do NFC payments through American Express. Obviously that would not make for happy customers, especially those that pre-ordered the Jawbone Up3. So it doesn’t look like it’ll be a great year for Jawbone, in regards to their wearables division. And litigating their competition appears to be the way they are going to make up for that.
Fitbit has been making fitness trackers for quite some time, and have many more products than Jawbone does. Including the recently announced Fitbit Charge and Charge HR. As we stated above, Fitbit is looking to go public on the stock market soon, and hopefully these lawsuits from Jawbone won’t affect the company hitting the stock market.
Update: Fitbit has reached out to us regarding the case,
“As the pioneer and leader in the connected health and fitness market, Fitbit has independently developed and delivered innovative product offerings to empower its customers to lead healthier, more active lives. Since its inception, Fitbit has more than 200 issued patents and patent applications in this area. Fitbit plans to vigorously defend itself against these allegations.”