Apple prevails in AliveCor patent case over Apple Watch

Apple and health technology company AliveCor have been embroiled in multiple legal battles for years, including a back-and-forth case with the International Trade Commission. In a decision today, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a previous decision from the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that found the three AliveCor patents at the center of its ITC case to be unpatentable. In 2021, AliveCor went to the ITC to accuse Apple of infringing on three of its patents with the Apple Watch’s heart rate monitoring features. In June 2022, the ITC reached an initial finding, agreeing with AliveCor that Apple had infringed its patented technology. Apple then went to the PTAB to request that AliveCor’s three patents be declared invalid. In December 2022, the PTAB ruled that AliveCor’s three patents were unpatentable, which is a broad way of saying that a patent claim is either too obvious or too generic. AliveCor then began the process ... Read full article.