The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) confirmed on Thursday that Apple’s Apple Watch with electrocardiogram (ECG) function infringes on a patent of medical device manufacturer AliveCor Inc.
Image source AliveCor
The ITC ruled that the importation of the infringing Apple Watch is prohibited, although it will not enforce the ban for now as an appeal to the U.S. Trademark and Patent Office (USPTO) is still pending. Earlier this month, another trial court ruled that AliveCor’s patents were invalid.
Apple and AliveCor did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
AliveCor last year accused Apple of infringing on three patents related to its KardiaBand, an Apple Watch accessory that monitors a user’s heart rate, detects abnormalities and performs ECGs to identify heart problems such as atrial fibrillation.
Mountain View, California-based AliveCor stopped selling KardiaBand in 2018 after Apple introduced the ECG feature to the Apple Watch. aliveCor filed a petition with the U.S. International Trade Commission last year, arguing that Apple had been copying its technology since the Apple Watch Series 4 and drove AliveCor out of the market by making wearOS incompatible with KardiaBand.
On December 6, at Apple’s request, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office invalidated the AliveCor patent in a related case. The tech giant also filed a countersuit in San Francisco federal court for alleged infringement of its patents.
