Who invented the smart ring? Oura Sues Circular –
This is the case of Oura Health Oy v. Circular SAS
More: justia.com and here.
Oura is perhaps the best known smart ring company with a good reputation for useful insights into sleep and readiness. The company has grown significantly in the last few years and has also secured significant levels of funding. Several new entrants are starting to get cohesive products to market, the most recent being Circular which has been taking pre-orders over the last few months and are about to start shipping. Or at least it was until…
Oura alleges the infringements of two patents, numbered 10,893,833 and 10,842,429. Furthermore, it sent a Cease and Desist letter in January 2022 to Circular telling it to stop selling the ring.
On January 21, 2022, Ōura sent a cease and desist letter to Circular (“Cease and Desist Letter”). Circular responded on February 4, 2022, denying infringement which lead to additional communications between the parties. In particular, Circular admitted to knowing of and studying Ōura’s patents prior to the Cease and Desist Letter in an email dated February 15, 2022, and promised, but failed, to follow up with a substantive response explaining why its product did not infringe.
Digging a little deeper into the meat of the claims we discover more about what exactly is being infringed upon, namely this:
Patent 10,893,833
The ’833 Patent generally describes and claims a wearable electronic device including a body part, an electronic part, and a coating. The body part is made of a non-ceramic material and has a cavity. The depth of the cavity is arranged within an inner surface of the body part, and the electronic part is arranged in the cavity. The electronic part has a thickness less than the depth of cavity. The coating is made of a moldable filler material on the inner surface of the body part covers the electronic part
and
Patent 10,842,429 (Filed 2016-02-23)
The ’429 Patent generally describes and claims a method and system of obtaining a user’s movements, using the movements to determine a rest period or activity period, measuring biosignals during the rest period, determining a rest period summary, determining an activity summary, determining a body response summary based on the rest summary and activity summary, calculating a readiness score, and showing elements contributing to the readiness score and instructions related to physical activity and mental activity for improving the readiness score on a user interface of a mobile communication device.
To my wholly amateur reading, these patents stop any other smartring company from using sensor data to determine readiness, rest and activity. Smart rings seem to have been invented by Oura in February 2016.
Smart rings seem to have been invented by Oura in February 2016.
Perhaps we shall see more legal fireworks against the CART-I smart ring by skylabs who are also entering the market?
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Competition by lawsuit is usually not a good sign.
This two citations read like:
„Lets patent to put a sensor into a casing and using composite to seal it there“
And
„Lets use sensors to read out bod data“.
Or it’s if Pepsi sues CocaCola for filling liquids into containers made out of glas.
I don’t understand the details of patent law. I do understand patents are about ‘novelty’ , so to put these sensors and methods onto a ring format wearable was certainly ‘novel’. good luck to them if they really did invent the smart ring.
my guess would be that there could be difficulties if the things they are patenting had been done PUBLICALLY before the date of their application. If so I believe it would count as public domain and so couldn’t be patented. I cycle with some patent lawyers as it happens so will have to ask them.