According to a filing from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Apple isn’t violating any AliveCor patents in Apple Watch models with redesigned ECGs. Therefore, those models are not under the International Trade Commission’s (ITC) Limited Exclusion Order (LEO).
As noted by AppleInsider, All of that legal verbiage translates to this — Apple can import Apple Watch for sale in the US without paying a $2 bond for each one.” This is all part of an online legal dispute.
In February it was determined that Apple won’t have to face a lawsuit alleging the Apple Watch copied heart-monitoring technology from AliveCor. US District Judge Jeffrey White in Oakland, California, entered a judgment in favor of Apple, Bloomberg reports. Details of decision were filed under seal, due to confidentiality concerns by the companies.
Apple made this statement to MacRumors at the time: At Apple, our teams are constantly innovating to create products and services that empower users with health, wellness, and life-saving features. AliveCor’s lawsuit challenged Apple’s ability to improve important capabilities of the Apple Watch that consumers and developers rely on, and today’s outcome confirms that is not anticompetitive. We thank the Court for its careful consideration of this case, and will continue to protect the innovations we advance on behalf of our customers against meritless claims.
However, a separate dispute between Apple and AliveCor over patents related to Apple Watch’s ECG feature continues. AliveCor made this statement to 9to5Mac: AliveCor is deeply disappointed and strongly disagrees with the court’s decision to dismiss our anti-competition case and we plan to appeal. We will continue to vigorously protect our intellectual property to benefit our consumers and promote innovation. The dismissal decision does not impact AliveCor’s ongoing business; we will continue to design and provide the best portable ECG products and services to our customers.
Separately, the ITC’s findings that Apple has infringed AliveCor’s patents still stand. Both the ITC and U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) appeals will be reviewed at the Federal Circuit in the Northern District of California in the coming months. In other recent developments, the PTAB recently ruled in AliveCor’s favor by instituting Inter Partes Review (IPR) of Apple’s patents and a stay of Apple’s countersuit.
AliveCor claims Apple infringes on patents regarding its ECG “KardiaBand” (pictured) designed for the Apple Watch, among other ECG-focused products. Following its December 2020 filing of a lawsuit against Apple over patent infringement, AliveCor also took its case to the ITC in April 2021. In June the ITC judge backed AliveCor, and has recommended that the ITC undertake a review of the case.
The lawsuit, lodged in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in 2020, claims that the ECG functionality on the Apple Watch Series 4 and later infringes on its intellectual property related to use wearable sensors to improve cardiac monitoring technology. All three patents in the dispute focus on monitoring for cardiac arrhythmias, or an irregular heartbeat. The patented technology includes the use of data from wearable devices to aid in diagnosing the condition.
On Dec. 3, 2022 Apple filed a patent infringement lawsuit against AliveCor. In its lawsuit, the tech giant had this to say: Rather than develop its technology from scratch, however, AliveCor resorted to including the very technology that Apple created and patented. This was no accident: AliveCor has long known of Apple’s patented technology, as many of AliveCor’s own patents cite to many of Apple’s patented innovations.
