lawsuit Archives - Capital Berg

Consumer Reports Claims Fitbit’s Trackers Are Accurate

January 25, 2016 By Carol Harper

The class-action lawsuit has been filed, but Consumer Reports claims Fitbit’s trackers are accurate and their heart monitoring feature works perfectly. There is little doubt that Fitbit has likely climbed up the ranks to the peak of fitness trackers. Their devices have become a force to reckon with in terms of competition, one that Apple is currently facing.

However, on January 5^th, customers from several states filed a class-action lawsuit against the company. The accusations? The users stated that their devices had “a very significant margin” of error, especially during intense workouts. Particularly, the problems were found in Fitbit Charge HR and Fitbit Surge. This did not only question the quality of the products, but implicitly affected the health assessment of the users.

Fitbit’s shares dropped in consequence

According to the lawsuit, when placed against manual measuring of heart rate or other equipment, Fitbit’s gadgets were off by an average of 24 beats per minute. In the most severe cases, usually during intense exercise, the margin of error climbed up to a worrying 75 beats per minute. In consequence, Fitbit’s share dropped around 20% in that week at the beginning of the year.

However, the company stood firmly behind their PurePulse technology.

Now, Consumer Reports seems to be backing the fitness trackers. In order to properly test the wrist wearables, they recruited two volunteers, one male and one female. For better terms of comparison on the efficiency of Fitbit Charge HR and Fitbit Surge, the participants were strapped with a Polar H7 device on their chest that monitors heart rate. The product’s quality has been well proven, though it suffers in popularity due to the discomfort it may cause the user.

The tests were underway and participants were monitored in four different phases. At rest, at a walking pace where they recorded 110 beats per minute (bpm), at a jogging pace with 130 bmp, and at a fast running with 150 bpm. And just to be sure, they conducted the tests once more.

A mere 3 bmp margin of error

According to their results, both the Fitbit Charge HR and Fibit Surge work just fine. The margin of error was insignificant, of just 3 bmp, between devices. That is nowhere near the alleged differences that were spotted by the accusing party. The only slight problem encountered is when the female volunteer wore the Charge HR on her wrist. The margin there was of 6 bmp, a slight but nonetheless mention-worthy difference.

However, the gadget arrives with the advice that it can be worn a few inches higher up the forearm for more accurate results. When that was tested, the heart rate tracking improved. But in this day and age, not everyone reads the instruction manual.

Image source: watchfaceaday.com

Apple, Google New Settlement To Resolve Employee Poaching Lawsuit

January 14, 2015 By Denise Ehrlich

4 Silicon Valley firms including Apple Inc. and Google Inc. have consented to a new agreement that would resolve an antitrust legal claim by tech workers, who blamed the companies of scheming to abstain from poaching each other’s employees.

Claimants blamed Apple, Google, Intel Corp. also Adobe Systems Inc. in the 2011 claim of constraining job mobility and, thus, keeping a lid on salaries.it

The case has been strictly viewed because of the likelihood of enormous harms being rewarded and for the chance to look into the world of some of America’s best tech firms.

US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, Calif., rejected a $324.5 million settlement of the claim last year as excessively low after one of the named claimants objected.

That employee will support the new contract, his lawyer Daniel Girard said, which could be a joint payment of $415 million; the New York Times reported referring a person close to the concessions.

Delegates for Apple, Intel and Adobe declined to remark. A Google representative couldn’t be arrived at, nor could a lawyer for the claimants.

The case was based mostly on emails in which Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, previous Google CEO Eric Schmidt and some of their opponents’ detailed plans to abstain from poaching one another’s prized engineers.

In dismissing the $324.5 million deal, Koh over and again alluded to a related 2013 settlement including Disney and Intuit.

Apple and Google employees got relatively less than Disney employees, Koh said, despite the fact that claimants’ attorneys had “substantially more influence” against Apple and Google.

To match the prior settlement, the deal with Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe “would need to total at least $380 million,” Koh said.

In the short court filing on Tuesday, the firms said claimants would file a detailed clarification of the new deal “quickly.” Koh will then likely choose whether to acknowledge or reject it.

Google, Apple Offer New Deal to Settle U.S Poaching Lawsuit

January 14, 2015 By Cliff Jenkins Scott

Finally, four firms of Silicon Valley technology have reached a settlement for a lawsuit. The court case alleges that the four tech companies have infringement antitrust lawsuits.

Google, Intel, Apple and Adobe system were involved in the lawsuit which claims that the companies agreed that they would not poach workers of each other. Such kind of agreement is against the antitrust laws of the country.

The analysts were closely observing the lawsuit which was filed in 2011. Lucy Koh, the U.S District Judge rebuffed a settlement offer of $324.5 million. He stated that the offered amount was low as compared to the violation of antitrust laws. Hence, it was expected that the case would cause big damages to the four big tech companies of the world.

The emails of Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt and other companies are the biggest evidence for the lawsuit. In that emails, the head of the four tech companies agreed to avoid poaching each other’s engineers. The agreement allowed companies to keep low salary scale of the high engineers.

Surprisingly, the court filing of Tuesday verified that the case is resolved. However, the companies have kept the terms and conditions of the settlement in dark.

The spokesman of Google, Intel and Adobe refused to make any comment on the issue. Nonetheless, Intel’s spokesman confirms that the company does not wish to disclose the amount of settlement.

Lawsuit Against Apple For ‘Disappearing’ Storage Space In iOS 8

January 1, 2015 By Denise Ehrlich

A legal claim filed this week in the Bay Area’s fed court is reprimanding Apple over claims that iOS 8 can consume as much as 23.1% of the publicized space on the company’s mobile products. If truth be told, there’s no real way to shun utilizing up a certain amount of space on electronic gadgets that oblige a substantial operating system, however in this case, the claim asserts that Apple doesn’t tell potential purchasers how much of their gadget’s publicized space goes to the operating system.

As per Siliconbeat, “To aggravate matters, the claim says Apple sways clients to buy more storage space through its iCloud service. The suit looks for unspecified damages alongside changes to Apple approaches under California state law.”

“We feel that there are a considerable number of Apple purchasers that have been duped, and we’ll be following the claims briskly,” said William Anderson, an attorney at Cuneo Gilbert & Laduca, a law firm situated in Washington, DC.

The claim indicates that clients who install iOS 8 or buy a gadget with iOS 8 already installed purportedly get a lot less space than publicized, which can range from 18.1% of the iPhone 5s to 23.1% for the iPod.

“With these sharp business strategies, defendant gives less space than publicized, just to sell that storage capacity in a frantic minute, e.g., when a buyer is attempting to record or take photographs at a child or grandchild’s recital, b-ball game or wedding,” the claim peruses.

Apple touts iOS 8 as being its prime release since the App Store. It symbolizes a real update to the mobile platform with heaps of new features from top to bottom. Gadgets that support iOS 8 include iPhone models from the 4s to the 6 Plus, all three iPad mini tablets, the 4th generation iPad on up to the iPad Air 2, and the 5th generation iPod touch.

Class-Action Lawsuit Against Facebook Over Unauthorized Message Scanning

December 25, 2014 By June Harris

We know: In spite of its best endeavors at demonstrating overall, Facebook and privacy have an oil/water repute – the most recent legitimate news concerning the organization won’t help that any, either. A California judge lately decided that The Social Network will confront a class-action charges following allegations that it peeped at clients’ private messages without agree to permission to deliver targeted ads.

Facebook strives to reject the claims, saying that it didn’t infringe upon any laws and that the claimed message scans were secured under an exemption in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, as indicated by Reuters. Which one particularly? That these “interceptions” are legal if they happen over the “standard course” of a service provider’s business. The supervising judge countered, saying that Zuckerberg and Co. botched to offer clarification of how the scans fell under the site’s standard course of business.

As the claim stands, it’d help any Facebook client that’d sent or got links by means of the site’s private message framework in the previous two years, as reported by Bloomberg. We’d be delinquent if we missed the conceivable pay-out, however: “as much as” $10,000 in damages for every client. Duplicate that by Facebook’s billion more clients, holding the one and you turn out to a whole lot of money.

In less thrilling news, the offended parties also need the social titan to quit scanning messages. Sound recognizable? Assuredly so, as Google is under comparative (however not class-action) legitimate investigation for message scanning of its own. The consequences of both of these cases will about surely have enormous impacts for how we communicate on the web getting up and go, and you can bet we’ll be following them directly in the impending year.

Fitbit’s shares dropped in consequence

A mere 3 bmp margin of error

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