Apple Must Face Apple Watch Patent Infringement Lawsuit, Court Rules

Apple faces a patent infringement lawsuit alleging it used heart rate sensor technology for the Apple Watch, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled on Monday.

The original lawsuit, filed against Apple in 2018, alleged that the Apple Watch’s heart rate measurement technology infringed on multiple patents owned by Omni MedSci Inc.Apple moved to dismiss the lawsuit, only to be denied by a District Court of USA

Apple appealed that decision, which took the case to the Federal Circuit. On Monday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the lower court’s decision and ruled that Apple must face the patent infringement lawsuit.

The patents list University of Michigan professor Mohammed Islam as their inventor. Islam then assigned the patent rights to Omni MedSci.

Apple’s argument was that the patents actually belonged to the university, as Islam’s employment agreement stipulated that any patent would belong to the university if it was obtained through the activity it supported.

The federal circuit disagreed, stating that the employment agreement did not automatically transfer intellectual property rights to the university. Instead, the court ruled that the agreement is, at best, “a declaration of a future intention to assign the patents in question.”

“He did not effect a current automatic assignment of the UM title and therefore did not deny Dr. Islam’s assignment of the inventions to Omni,” the court’s decision reads. “Consequently, the denial by the district court of Apple’s motion to dismiss due to lack of standing is confirmed.”

According to the original 2018 lawsuit, Islam met with Apple executives to discuss medical patent applications ahead of the Apple Watch launch. The complaint alleged that Apple took ideas from those meetings and incorporated them into the heart rate sensor of the Apple Watch.

In the lawsuit, Islam seeks infringement damages and an injunction against the products that infringed the patents at issue.

Source：news-block.com

Editor：IPRdaily-Vapor