While the Apple Watch may be enjoying the current health-tracker buzz, Fitbit recently made headlines, first for its initial public offering of stock and then for being sued by Jawbone. The lawsuit alleges that when Fitbit poached Jawbone personnel, some of those prospective employees took valuable, proprietary information from Jawbone with them when they departed for Fitbit.
According to The New York Times coverage, the complaint includes allegations that Fitbit recruiters contacted “nearly one-third of Jawbone’s employees” and that some of those employees “downloaded information like Jawbone’s current and future business plans and products” and “used programs to cover their tracks or deleted system logs.”
Included in the lawsuit was Fitbit’s Chief People Officer’s, Marty Reaume, confirmation that Fitbit actively recruited Jawbone personnel but that she “revealed nothing of the knowing theft and misappropriation of Jawbone’s proprietary information, nor its plans to use such information to overcome the shortcomings in its overinflated business projections.”
The Times states that Jawbone has faced speculation about its own financial health and that it “has been bedeviled by production issues throughout its 16-year history.”
In the lawsuit, Jawbone seeks damages and “preliminary and permanent injunctive relief to prevent the individual Defendants form disclosing any additional trade secrets belonging to Jawbone.”
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