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 posted a report titled “Apple has been sued by EKG Device Maker ‘AliveCor’ for Patent Infringement.” In late June 2022 we posted another report titled “An Initial Determination from an International Trade Commission Judge Finds that Apple Infringed AliveCor’s Patented ECG related Technology.” Late yesterday, Apple filed a 4-count counter patent infringement lawsuit against AliveCor in California.  

In Apple’s formal Complaint before the court, Apple states that “This is an action about innovation and the opportunism and profiteering that threatens it. Apple Inc. (“Apple”) is a global technology company that has, for decades, introduced cutting-edge, life-changing advancements in electronic healthcare that are relied upon by millions on a daily basis to better their lives.

Since its founding almost 50 years ago, Apple has held its place as an American and worldwide leader by developing innovative technology, investing billions in domestic research and development of technologies in a wide variety of industries, and producing devices and applications that are at the core of today’s society. In particular, Apple has long been an industry leader in cutting-edge electronic healthcare solutions and has invested its considerable expertise and creativity in developing such systems and bringing them to the public.

Among such advances, Apple has developed and patented a wide array of novel health and fitness technologies, each of which provides users with accurate and highly accessible technology-powered insights empowering them to live a healthier life. These include numerous critical, ground-breaking ECG technologies provided by the 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 foundational technologies pertaining to embedded heart rate and electric cardiac activity monitors. Apple’s massive commitments to innovation in the healthcare industry led to critical developments in key technologies, including those related to sensing irregular heart rhythms that may be suggestive of 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 just a few.

These advancements also include an integrated sensor in an electronic device that can measure a user’s heartbeat, heartrate, and other signals generated by the user’s heart, which are the subjects of the ’257 patent-in-suit. Apple also improved upon this design with sealed button systems, which are the subjects of the ’619 patent-in-suit, as well as user interfaces for monitoring such health data, which are the subjects of the ’533 patent-in-suit.

Apple also developed the ability to aggregate such data for a user’s healthcare providers to review, which is the subject of the ’898 patent-in-suit. It is innovations such as these and the millions of dollars Apple invested in the research and development of these innovations—including the many features surrounding the Apple Watch and Apple’s Health App—that have bettered the lives of millions who use Apple’s healthcare devices and pioneered the personal health advancements that AliveCor attempts to co-opt through its litigation campaign against Apple.

This case is about a far different story involving AliveCor, Inc. (“AliveCor”) and its brazen infringement of Apple’s technology—technology that Apple developed years before AliveCor even came into existence. Founded in 2010, AliveCor’s business has focused on the sale of portable ECG devices which rely on numerous technologies in Apple’s iPhone and/or Watch to provide ECG information to AliveCor’s customers. 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.

But AliveCor’s business has not been commercially successful, and has instead been propped up by funding from private investors. AliveCor has responded to its own failures in the market through opportunistic assertions of its patents against Apple. For example, AliveCor filed a complaint before the International Trade Commission (“Commission”), seeking to stop Apple from importing its products into the United States based on its assertion of patents covering unimportant alleged improvements to ECG devices. And while an Administrative Law Judge issued an Initial Determination in that action finding a violation—a finding that Apple is presently contesting before the Commission—Apple now brings this action to set the record straight as to who is the real pioneer and to stop AliveCor’s rampant infringement that unlawfully appropriates Apple’s intellectual property.

Apple is the pioneering innovator, having researched, developed, and patented core, foundational technologies before AliveCor came into existence. AliveCor’s litigation campaign is nothing more than an attempt to siphon from the success of Apple technologies it did not invent, all the while selling products that rely on foundational ECG innovations that Apple patented years before AliveCor came to be.”

The Patents that Apple Claims AliveCor Infringe

• 10,076,257: “Seamlessly Embedded Heart Rate Monitor”
• 10,270,898: “Wellness Aggregator”
• 10,866,619: “Electronic Device Having Sealed Button Biometric Sensing
• System”
• 10,568,533: “User Interfaces For Health Monitoring”

The Accused Products

Apple notes in their formal complaint with the court that the accused products 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 “Accused 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 Lawsuit by Jack Purcher on Scribd