Finnish startup Oura Ring sues Ultrahuman over alleged copying of technology

Healthtech startup Ultrahuman, which develops fitness trackers, has been sued by Finnish startup Oura Ring, who has alleged that the former copied its technology as per documents dated September, a report said.

As per a report by The Next Web, a lawsuit filed by Oura in September in a Texas court accuses Ultrahuman of copying patents and accessing proprietary information belonging to Oura through its ex-employees.

YourStory has seen a copy of the lawsuit.

As per the lawsuit, Oura, set up in 2013, has nearly a million users. "Ultrahuman is intended to be an imitation of Oura Ring in its appearance, structure, and functionalities," the company claimed in its suit.

It also alleged that the Indian startup has copied several patents filed under Oura. "Ultrahuman’s efforts to copy Oura do not stop at infringement, but have extended to hiring former Oura employees, soliciting current Oura engineers, and potentially benefiting from some of its primary investors gaining access to Oura’s proprietary and confidential information prior to launch of the Ultrahuman Ring," it further said.

The Finland-based startup also levied several other allegations against Ultrahuman, including similarities in the form of its ring device and the app design, among others. The company launched its first edition of the ring in 2022, and its most recent, Ring Air, in June this year.

Queries sent to Ultrahuman remain unanswered at the time of publishing this story. It will be updated to reflect the company's response.

Founded in 2019 by Mohit Kumar and Vatsal Singhal, Ultrahuman raised $17.5 million in a Series B funding round from Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI), which is backed by DisruptAD and managed by Falcon Edge, Steadview Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Blume Ventures, and Utsav Somani’s iSeed fund.

It also counts Tiger Global’s Scott Schleifer, Sandeep Singhal, Kunal Shah, Sujeet Kumar, Deepinder Goyal, Gunjan Patidar, Gaurav Munjal, Revant Bhate, Mohit Gupta, Vikram Dhingra, and Roman Saini, among its backers.