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The U.S. International Trade Commission has agreed to open an investigation to determine whether the Apple Watch infringes on patents held by health tech company AliveCor.
On Monday, the USITC said it voted to open an inquiry into the alleged patent infringement. The vote follows an official filing by AliveCor back in April.
The USITC said it would announcement a target data for completing the investigation within 45 days.
AliveCor is a company that makes electrocardiogram (ECG) hardware and related services. The company lodged a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple in December 2020, claiming that the Apple Watch infringes on its intellectual property related to using wearable sensors for cardiac monitoring.
The company was the first to debut a consumer ECG device, the KardiaBand, cleared by the Food and Drug Administration. Unlike the Apple Watch, use of the KardiaBand had to be approved by a user's doctor. And, after Apple debuted ECG capabilities on the Apple Watch Series 4, AliveCor pulled the KardiaBand from sale.
Charles Martin
Christine McKee
Oliver Haslam
13 Comments
LoL
The insanity and blatant grabs for cash have become incessant
There is no competition if companies continue to take the low road and simply sue. It’s ridiculous.
The ITC is a quasi-judicial US government agency created by the US congress 100 years ago that advises government and courts on the legality of trade issues, mostly for imports. Its purpose is to give advice. The fact that the ITC has taken this case means that they think there is a question to be answered. It does not mean they have an answer at this point. The answer could be good or bad for either party. Let the process work itself out.
I remember decades ago when the tobacco companies were being sued. They lost a case for many billions of dollars, and with that decision their stock shot up. I wondered why it went up when the lost. Because all the questions about liability had been answered, and even though the answers weren't in their favour, it meant they still had a right to exist. Losing a court case was a big win for them.
I'm sure that Tim Cook gets weekly status reports about the various court cases against Apple every week. At Tim's level, he doesn't need to see all the details. At the end of the year he probably wants to know how many billions Apple paid out in court fines. If the number is under $5B, he probably says "Okay, what's next on the agenda?"
Isn't there a model of the FitBit that does ECG? I've also seen other products that do this. Are all of them infringing on the same patents, have they licnesed them, or are there other patents that have been approved to do the same thing?