Fitbit employees charged with stealing Jawbone trade secrets

NelsonG · June 15, 2018

Six current and former Fitbit employees have been hit with a federal indictment over the theft of trade secrets from one-time rival, Jawbone. All had worked for Jawbone for at least a year between 2011 and 2015, before jumping ship and getting hired by the company’s chief competitor.

The allegations have been floating around for a while. Look, we even made a graphic for the stream of allegations being lobbed back and forth between the wearable makers.

Shortly before Fitbit’s 2015 IPO, Jawbone filed a suit alleging that Fitbit had attempted to recruit nearly a third of its employees. The suit was seemingly resolved late last year, however, through a global settlement between both parties.

“In a trade secret misappropriation case brought by Jawbone in the International Trade Commission in 2016 that involved these same individuals,” Fitbit said in a statement given to TechCrunch this morning, “a federal administrative law judge during a nine-day trial on the merits found that no Jawbone trade secrets were misappropriated or used in any Fitbit product, feature or technology.”

Jawbone, of course, has since fallen on tough times. The company was liquidated roughly this time last year, as CEO Hosain Rahman set out to create a related health startup. As far as the DOJ was concerned, however, the story isn’t finished just yet.

“Intellectual property is the heart of innovation and economic development in Silicon Valley,” Acting U.S. Attorney Alex Tse told MarketWatch “The theft of trade secrets violates federal law, stifles innovation, and injures the rightful owners of that intellectual property.”

Update: Rahman has provided TechCrunch the following statement,

We believe the Justice Department’s indictment of six current and former Fitbit Inc. employees for stealing trade secrets from their former employer, Jawbone, validates the claims we made in our 2015 lawsuit against Fitbit . On behalf of former employees, investors, suppliers and others associated with Jawbone, we look forward to seeing justice take its course in this case.