Mobile medical device company AliveCor has filed a lawsuit against Apple alleging that the Apple Watch’s electrocardiogram feature infringes on a trio of patents owned by AliveCor.
The lawsuit, filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, asks for an enjoinment on Apple’s alleged infringement, as well as damages, attorney fees, and other legal costs.
The lawsuit claims the ECG functionality included on the Apple Watch Series 4 and newer infringes on AliveCor intellectual property that covers wearable sensors to improve cardiac monitoring technology.
According to the complaint, AliveCor’s patents — numbered 10,595,761 10,638,941, and 9,572,499 — “explain state of the art in arrhythmia diagnosis, the limitations in known diagnostic techniques and diagnostic equipment, and the need for the inventors’ improvement in diagnostic techniques and equipment.”
All three AliveCor patents focus on monitoring for cardiac arrhythmias or an irregular heartbeat.
“The claims of the [patents] are novel, unconventional, and focus on specific means and methods of using specialized sensors in a wearable device to improve upon existing cardiac monitoring technology,” the lawsuit reads.
AliveCor says Apple knew of the three patents and willfully infringed, and continues to willfully infringe, on those patents by producing its Apple Watch lineup. The Apple Watch Series 5 is the device specifically named in the lawsuit.
Unlike many of these types of websites, AliveCor isn’t simply a patent troll looking for a payday, as they actually make various cardiac monitoring devices. The company was the first to offer a consumer ECG device approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
