A former executive for defunct wearable-devices firm Jawbone who quit and went to rival Fitbit was acquitted by a jury Monday in a case involving allegedly stolen trade secrets.
After a two-week trial in U.S. District Court in San Jose, a jury took less than two hours to clear Katherine Mogal of charges that she had been in possession of Jawbone’s intellectual property after she left the firm.
She and five other former employees of Jawbone, a San Francisco company that went bust in 2017, were indicted in June 2018 and charged with possessing documents allegedly stolen from the company and intended to be used to benefit “someone other than Jawbone,” according to court filings. The federal government dropped the case against one of the accused, Ana Rosario, in December.
Mogal was accused of possessing a half dozen studies belonging to Jawbone after leaving and certifying she’d returned all company property. As director of market and customer insights, she’d been employed at Jawbone for about 20 months before moving to Fitbit, also in San Francisco, according to court documents.
“This case has been an absolute nightmare for her,” said Mogal’s lawyer Randy Luskey. “I just immediately saw the weight lifted off her shoulders when the jury read that verdict.”
The case against the four remaining defendants is pending. The U.S. Department of Justice could not be reached Monday for comment.
Fitbit sued Jawbone over the allegedly stolen trade secrets in civil court, and settled in 2017. Google announced in November it was buying Fitbit for $2.1 billion.
