Jawbone files complaint with ITC against Fitbit, seeks to block company from importing fitness trackers into US, in third legal action in two months
Jeff Elder / Wall Street Journal :
Context & Ripple Effects
By July 2015 Jawbone had already escalated twice: a May suit accusing Fitbit of "systematically plundering" confidential materials via poached employees (the trade-secret case) and a June patent-infringement filing (its second suit in two weeks). The ITC complaint adds a sharper instrument — an exclusion order blocks imports at the border, which matters because Fitbit sells imported consumer hardware on thin margins.
First-order effects
- Fitbit faces the immediate prospect of being barred from importing its fitness trackers into its largest market, with its entire product line exposed rather than a single model.
- Jawbone shifts its fight from damages-based court cases to a fast-track trade remedy where the remedy is market exclusion, forcing Fitbit to defend on three fronts at once.
Second-order effects
- A sustained ITC case raises Fitbit's cost base precisely where the coverage says it is weakest — low consumer hardware margins — pressuring pricing and R&D budgets while litigation drags on.
- Fitbit's likely response is counter-filing: it did file a countersuit by November (calling Jawbone's case frivolous), making mutual patent-invalidity the center of gravity for both companies' defenses.
Third-order effects
- The ITC becomes the venue of choice in wearables disputes because import bans are faster than district-court damages — a pattern that recurs later in the same forum, from the rulings on Jawbone's own patents to the ITC's favoring of Oura over Ultrahuman and even the Apple Watch import-ban episode.
- If exclusion threats keep landing on hardware importers, wearables firms will treat patent portfolios and trade-secret hygiene as core competitive assets rather than legal afterthoughts.
The trend: Hardware makers under margin pressure are weaponizing ITC import bans against rivals, turning trade remedies into the decisive battleground of wearable-device competition.