Jawbone: Six former employees accused of stealing fitness-tracking firm’s secrets

Federal prosecutors have charged six former employees of Jawbone, the defunct maker of fitness trackers, with stealing trade secrets from the company and taking jobs at a competing company, Fitbit.

The U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California indicted Katherine Mogal, Ana Rosario, Patrick Narron, Patricio Romano, Ron Zhang and Jing Qi Weiden on Thursday in San Jose. One currently works at Fitbit, while the others no longer work at the company. They were each charged with one to six counts of possession of stolen trade secrets.

The trade secrets at issue include market research on customers’ buying habits, vendor and pricing information for suppliers, and design documents for headphones.

“Intellectual property is the heart of innovation and economic development in Silicon Valley,” acting U.S. Attorney Alex Tse said in a statement. “The theft of trade secrets violates federal law, stifles innovation and injures the rightful owners of that intellectual property.”

The same defendants were accused of stealing trade secrets from Jawbone in a 2015 civil lawsuit brought by Jawbone against Fitbit. They were also named by Jawbone in a similar case brought before the International Trade Commission; the commission determined in 2016 that Fitbit did not steal trade secrets.

“A federal administrative law judge ... found that no Jawbone trade secrets were misappropriated or used in any Fitbit prod-

uct, feature or technology,” a Fitbit spokesman said about the ITC decision. He declined to comment on the criminal case.

Jawbone went out of business in 2017. In a statement, the company’s founder and CEO, Hosain Rahman, said the Justice Department’s indictment “validates the claim we made in our lawsuit against Fitbit.”

“On behalf of former employees, investors, suppliers and others associated with Jawbone, we look forward to seeing justice take its course in this case,” Rahman said.

The defendants are scheduled to appear July 9 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Virginia DeMarchi in San Jose. If convicted, they face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and fines of $250,000 per count, and a maximum three years of supervised release.