Apple Watch no longer faces import ban in the U.S. after Appeals Court ruling

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed today with a previous ruling made by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). That ruling found that three patents owned by health tech firm AliveCor are “unpatentable.” As a result, the International Trade Commission (ITC) cannot put an import ban on Apple Watch models containing the heart rate monitor in the U.S.

This case started back in 2021 when AliveCor went to the International Trade Commission (ITC) complaining that Apple infringed on three of its patents related to the heart rate monitoring sensor found on the Apple Watch. The ITC ruled in favor of AliveCor in 2021 forcing Apple to appeal to the PTAB. The PTAB found in Apple’s favor saying that the three patents were “unpatentable.” AliveCor decided to appeal that decision. A few weeks later, the ITC ruled in favor of AliveCor and said that Apple did infringe on the aforementioned patents which it found to be valid.

The  ITC was in the process of writing up an Exclusion Order that would have banned the importation into the U.S. of Apple Watch models that contained the heart rate monitor that  was found to infringe on AliveCor’s patents. That import ban would have affected every current Apple Watch model sold in the U.S. at that time since all of them offered the heart rate monitor. However, the ITC paused the Exclusion Order and decided to wait until a ruling was issued on the legitimacy of the three AliveCor patents. Remember, the PTAB had previously called the patents “unpatentable.”

AliveCor’s statement said that the company was disappointed and accused the PTAB of not going through secondary considerations that the ITC did when it ruled that the patents were valid. 

The heart rate monitor measures the number of beats per minute achieved by an Apple Watch user. If that number is too low or too high compared to a preset range created by the user, a notification is sent to the device user who might have to see a doctor immediately if his/her heart rate is way beyond the preset range.