It’s “fitting” that our first week of blogs in the new year, when exercise resolutions are fresh, includes an update on Fitbit and Jawbone’s legal laps. In 2015, we posted a blog about Jawbone’s class-action lawsuit against Fitbit. Last month, Fitbit announced that it was dropping its own case against Jawbone, alleging that the competitor had violated one of its patents.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Fitbit is no longer pursuing the lawsuit because it believes that Jawbone is in financial trouble. Had Fitbit prevailed, it could have prevented Jawbone from selling its wearable devices in the United States. Or as Ars Technica zinged in its own coverage: “if it can sell devices at all.”
According to the WSJ, despite Jawbone’s known financial difficulties (it’s no longer selling its devices online), the company stated that it doesn’t have any plans to file for bankruptcy.
Around this time last year, we posted that Fitbit was facing its own class-action lawsuits, which alleged that the company was using faulty heart-monitoring technology.