After the first accusations launched last December against Apple forpatent infringement, AliveCor has once again stepped up to the plate. The American company, which markets connected objects for recording ECGs, has already raised more than one hundred and fifty million dollars. Its last all-table - dating from November - notably included Qualcomm as an investor: it is the manufacturer of the majority of processors for Android smartphones.
HealthTech thus announced, on Tuesday April 20, that it had approached the ITC to assert its rights. Under this acronym lies theInternational Trade Commission, the organization responsible for regulating commercial markets in the United States and beyond. If for the moment it is impossible to know what the outcome of these lawsuits will be, it is nevertheless very likely that Apple's lobbyists are already hard at work trying to thwart their opponent's plans.
What Apple is accused of
The motivations behind this affair, which promises to be major, are in fact linked to three AliveCor products whose technologies were allegedly copied by Apple. The first isSmartRhythm. This application, coupled with the Watch KardiaBand bracelet from the same brand, allowed you to continuously monitor your heartbeat. When it was released in 2017, the accessory marked a small revolution because the Cupertino watch did not yet offer all the sensors that we now find onSeries 6.
Other “victims”: theKardiaMobileand the KardiaMobile 6L, two items priced at $89 and $149 respectively. Relatively compact, these two ECGs whose design is reminiscent of that ofthe Siri Remoteonly require you to place your fingers on it to detect potential atrial fibrillation, in just a few seconds. Operation relatively similar to the Watch there too, therefore.
Banning the Watch in Washington?
One of the stated objectives behind the steps taken by AliveCor would be to purely and simply revoke the marketing authorization for Apple connected watches. Several models are thus targeted, includingSeries 4 and Series 5. The latter has the same shell as its SE version, and can still be found in certain stores for a price around four hundred euros.
