Fitbit Inc. has been involved in a contemptuous patent and trade secrets legal battle with AlphiCom Inc.’s Jawbone for over a year now. As of Friday, December 23rd, Fitbit has decided to drop the pending patent infringement complaint filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC).
Fitbit informed the ITC that they no longer wished to pursue the patent infringement lawsuit against AlphiCom. Fitbit stated “Jawbone appears to be a different company” in comparison to last year when the case was initially filed. “SEC filings of one of its biggest investors now value Jawbone shares as worth nothing, as well as indicate that Jawbone has filed for bankruptcy or is in default.” Fitbit further stated that “[Jawbone] no longer offers for sale any of its wearable activity trackers, nor any of its other products. Press reports and other public documents indicate that the demise of Jawbone’s products has created substantial questions regarding Jawbone’s ability to continue to operate.”
As we previously reported, both of these San Francisco based companies specialize in the manufacture of wearable fitness trackers and the three Fitbit patents in question are related to portable tracking devices (8,868,377), heart rate monitoring systems (8,920,332), and motion detection technology (9,089,760). In July of 2016, the ITC determined that the claims in two of the patents (8,868,377, 8,920,332) are directed to patent ineligible subject matter. While not entirely clear, it is likely the Court found Fitbit’s claims ineligible because it considered them directed to an “abstract idea.” In September of this year, Fitbit was handed a victory when they successfully appealed the Trade Court’s ruling that their patent claims were ineligible. The ITC found that the courts ineligibility ruling was incorrect and sent the case back to the lower court for further review. Nevertheless, Fitbit withdrew their ITC suit altogether, rendering these decisions moot.
A spokesman for Jawbone noted there are no plans to file bankruptcy protection and said “Jawbone believes this case—involving patents already found once to be invalid—should have been dismissed long ago by Fitbit. Fitbit’s pursuit of these baseless claims for so long was to burden Jawbone, an issue to be raised in Jawbone’s antitrust claims against Fitbit.”
In a previous article, we discussed the lawsuit Jawbone brought against Fitbit. Jawbone’s suit was an attempt to block Fitbit from importing their fitness trackers into the United States. This lawsuit was based on allegations by Jawbone that Fitbit stole trade secrets from Jawbone by luring Jawbone’s employees to Fitbit in an attempt to steal information related to marketing plans and product design. Jawbone claims Fitbit is in possession of more than 1,800 of their files. The court ruled in favor of Fitbit on this matter and stated the company had not misappropriated trade secrets from Jawbone.
This is only one battle in the drawn out war between the two companies, and, while Jawbone may be grateful that Fitbit dropped this particular lawsuit, there are future rulings to come.