Oura Invented The Smart Ring in 2016 - will court case prove it?

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. [caption id="attachment_87670" align="aligncenter" width="845"] 10% Discount Automatically applied, or code the5krunner10[/caption] 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?