Oura Tries a New Patent Route

Oura is back in court against Ultrahuman, and the clause that matters is painfully simple: a Customs clearance is not a general pardon.

In a patent complaint filed in federal court in Texas, Oura alleges that Ultrahuman’s Ring Pro infringes two Oura patents and asks for damages plus a permanent injunction that would block U.S. sales. The suit also names SVTronics, a Texas manufacturer that Oura says makes the Ring Pro in Plano under Ultrahuman’s direction.

That is a different legal lane from the fight that kept Ultrahuman’s earlier Ring Air out of the country. TechCrunch reports that Ultrahuman’s redesigned Ring Pro got a favorable ruling from U.S. Customs and Border Protection in March, allowing it back into the U.S. market after an import ban tied to an International Trade Commission ruling against the older device. Oura’s position is that the Customs decision dealt with one patent from that earlier dispute, while this case relies on two others: design patent D804,471 and utility patent 12,769,363.

That second patent is the sharpest piece of leverage. It issued on October 20, just before Oura sued, and covers internal smart-ring components including a curved battery, circuit board, magnets and sensors. In ordinary language, Oura is saying Ultrahuman did not escape by redesigning around the first patent if the revised product still trespasses on different ones. Patent litigation has few more reliable habits than one door closing and another appearing in the same hallway.

What has actually been decided, for now, is very little. Oura has made allegations in a civil complaint. It has not yet won an injunction in this case, and Ultrahuman chief executive Mohit Kumar told TechCrunch there is no court order affecting Ring Pro and that it remains available to U.S. customers.

The jurisdiction matters because Oura is not asking border officials to act first; it is asking a U.S. district court to decide infringement and, if Oura wins, to stop sales. That raises the business stakes for Ultrahuman’s American return. An import ruling can get a product through customs. It cannot immunize the product from a fresh patent suit built on different claims.

For Oura, the pattern is familiar. The company has pressed patent claims against several smart-ring rivals, and some disputes have ended in licensing deals. For Ultrahuman, the immediate problem is narrower and less philosophical: a redesigned ring got back onto shelves, and Oura is trying to use a new set of patents to remove it again.