Smart Ring Maker Oura Faces Class Action Lawsuit in US Over False Sleep Tracking Claims

Oura, the smart ring company that recently entered the South Korean market, is facing a class action lawsuit in the United States over allegations of false advertising regarding its product performance.

According to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on the 21st (local time), Clarkson Law Firm filed a class action lawsuit against Oura, with California resident Madison Server acting as the lead plaintiff.

The plaintiffs claimed they suffered damages because the Oura product they purchased and used in May of last year failed to accurately measure sleep duration, the number of awakenings, and sleep quality.

They went on to criticize that Oura products lack the ability to directly detect physiological signals essential for measuring sleep stages, such as brain waves, eye movements, and jaw muscle activity. They pointed out that Oura acknowledged this in its technical documentation by stating that the lack of brain wave or eye movement measurement could lead to differences compared to a polysomnography (PSG), yet the company outwardly ran contradictory advertisements.

Oura has advertised through marketing and promotional materials that its products achieve a 79 percent accuracy rate in measuring sleep stages, with the latest model reaching up to 95 percent accuracy.

The company also claimed that its products were validated by an in-house scientific team consisting of more than 25 PhD-level researchers.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in San Francisco, Oura was valued at 11 billion dollars (approx. 15.2 trillion won) during a funding round in October of last year, and surpassed 1 billion dollars in annual revenue after selling 3 million smart rings last year.

The company is currently pursuing an initial public offering (IPO), having confidentially submitted its IPO registration to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last May.

(Photo: AP, Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.