Apple has filed a 4-count patent infringement lawsuit against AliveCor, maker of ECG hardware and software for mobile devices

In early December 2020, Patently Apple released a report titled “Apple sued by EKG Device Maker ‘AliveCor’ for patent infringement.” At the end of June 2022, we published another report titled “Initial ruling by International Trade Commission judge finds Apple infringed AliveCor’s patented ECG-related technology.” Late yesterday, Apple filed a 4-count patent infringement lawsuit against AliveCor in California.

In Apple’s official complaint to the court, Apple states that “this is an action against innovation and the opportunism and profit that threatens it. Apple Inc. (“Apple”) is a company technological world that has, for decades, introduced breakthrough technologies, revolutionary advances in electronic healthcare that millions of people rely on daily to improve their lives.

Since its founding nearly 50 years ago, Apple has maintained its place as a US and global leader by developing innovative technologies, investing billions in domestic research and development of technologies in a wide variety of industries, and producing devices and applications that are at the heart of today’s society. In particular, Apple has long been an industry leader in advanced electronic healthcare solutions and has invested its considerable expertise and creativity in developing such systems and making them available to the public.

Among these advancements, Apple has developed and patented a wide range of new health and fitness technologies, each providing users with accurate and highly accessible technological information to help them lead healthier lives. These include many critical and groundbreaking ECG technologies provided by Apple Watch and watchOS. Apple began developing and patenting these technologies over a decade ago.

For example, in 2008, Apple had already developed and filed for patent protection on specific and fundamental technologies relating to integrated electrical heart rate and activity monitors. Apple’s massive commitments to healthcare innovation have led to critical developments in key technologies, including those related to detecting irregular heart rhythms that may suggest atrial fibrillation (AFib), capturing an electrocardiogram (“ECG” or “EKG”), cycle tracking features for women (watchOS 6), blood oxygen saturation measurement (watchOS 7), respiratory tracking during sleep and fall detection ( watchOS 8), to name a few.

These advancements also include a sensor embedded in an electronic device that can measure a user’s heart rate, pulse rate, and other signals generated by the user’s heart, which are the subject of the ‘257 patent in suit. . Apple has also enhanced this design with sealed button systems, which are the subject of the subject ‘619 patent, as well as user interfaces to monitor such health data, which are the subject of the subject ‘533 patent.

Apple has also developed the ability to aggregate this data for a user’s healthcare providers to review, which is the subject of the ‘898 patent in suit. It’s innovations like these and the millions of dollars Apple has invested in researching and developing those innovations, including the many features surrounding the Apple Watch and Apple’s Health app, that have improved the lives of millions of users of Apple’s health devices and launched the advances in personal health that AliveCor is trying to reclaim through its litigation campaign against Apple.

This case is about a much different story involving AliveCor, Inc. (“AliveCor”) and its brazen violation of Apple technology, technology that Apple developed years before AliveCor even existed. Founded in 2010, AliveCor’s business has focused on selling wearable ECG devices that leverage many technologies from the iPhone and/or Apple Watch to provide ECG information to customers. from AliveCor. Rather than develop its technology from scratch, however, AliveCor used the very technology created and patented by Apple. It was no accident: AliveCor has long been familiar with Apple’s patented technology, as many of AliveCor’s patents cite many of Apple’s patented innovations.

But AliveCor’s activities have not been commercially successful and have instead been supported by funding from private investors. AliveCor has responded to its own market failures with opportunistic claims of its patents against Apple. For example, AliveCor filed a lawsuit with the International Trade Commission (“Commission”), seeking to prevent Apple from importing its products into the United States based on its assertion of patents covering allegedly insignificant improvements in ECG devices. . And while an administrative law judge made an initial decision in this action finding infringement – a finding that Apple is currently challenging at the Commission – Apple is now bringing this action to set the record straight as to who the real pioneer is. and to stop the AliveCor break-in. infringement that unlawfully appropriates Apple’s intellectual property.

Apple is the pioneering innovator, having researched, developed and patented fundamental technologies before the creation of AliveCor. AliveCor’s legal campaign is nothing more than an attempt to siphon off the success of Apple technologies it didn’t invent, while selling products that build on fundamental ECG innovations that Apple did. patented years before AliveCor was created. »

The patents Apple claims AliveCor infringes

• 10,076,257: “Seamlessly Integrated Heart Rate Monitor”
• 10,270,898: “Well-being aggregator”
• 10,866,619: “Electronic device with sealed button biometric detection
• System”
• 10,568,533: “User interfaces for health monitoring”

The accused products

Apple notes in its formal complaint to the court that the products charged in this case include, but are not limited to, AliveCor’s KardiaMobile Card, KardiaMobile, KardiaMobile 6L, Kardia App, KardiaPro (including devices and servers and mobile applications), and KardiaCare products (collectively, the “Defendant Products”).

For more details, read Apple’s full complaint filed with the court in the SCRIBD document below, courtesy of Patently Apple.

Apple Inc. v. AliveCor, Inc, Patent Infringement Action by Jack Purcher on Scribd