Smart ring manufacturers Oura and Circular announced a settlement in an ongoing patent cover on Tuesday. The agreed terms stipulate that the French company will conclude a multi-year agreement with Oura, in which it will license the intellectual property of the market leader for equipment sold in the United States.
Financial details of the agreement were kept confidential.
Oura has aggressively defended its technology against competitors. In March, CEO Tom Hale announced that the company had filed a complaint with the ITC alleging that Circular and other smart ring manufacturers Ultrahuman and RingConn had infringed several patents with their products.
“Unfortunately, we have no choice but to take action when we see companies taking shortcuts that mimic our innovations and riding on them,” Hale wrote. “We are clear about where we stand when it comes to patent infringement: we have invested countless hours of design, scientific research and engineering into our hardware, software and algorithms over a decade to create Oura Ring and the Oura membership experience, and we will always protect these efforts.”
The complaints against the newsletter concerned in particular the form factor and the readiness score, which Oura positions as an insight into psychological and physical stress factors. With an existing agreement, Oura will no longer pursue actions against Circular. Similar applications against RingConn and Ultrahuman were not rejected. So far there have been no registrations outside the USA.
Circular co-founder and CEO Amaury Kosman had some predictably nice things to say about his biggest competitor in a publication tied to today’s news. “Oura revolutionized wearable technology over ten years ago with the introduction of the Oura ring,” the executive noted. “We recognize the strength and usefulness of the fundamental patents granted to Oura, and this agreement rightfully compensates them for their groundbreaking innovations in smart rings.”
Such agreements are not uncommon in the world of consumer devices. Hardware giants such as Apple and Google are constantly closing such deals, since licensing patents is often a much easier way than a protracted litigation. But not every conflict is so easy to resolve. Take, for example, complaints from the medical technology company Masimo, which at the end of last year led to the cessation of sales of the Apple Watch Series 9.
