The lawsuit is filed by Omni MedSci and alleges that the sensor infringes upon patents belonging to its Founder and CTO.
Apple is facing a lawsuit for the heart rate sensor technology used in it the Apple Watch. Apple Insider reports that health technology startup Omni MedSci has filed the lawsuit alleging that the technology in the sensor infringes upon patents belonging to Dr. Mohammed N. Islam, who is the Founder and CTO of Omni MedSci.
According to the report, the heart rate sensor on the Apple Watch infringes upon four patents. Each patent is said to reference a wearable device that uses a source of light and a receiver to capture non-invasive blood measurements. Omni MedSci claims that the Watch uses this technology to measure heart rate.
In the lawsuit, Omni MedSci claims that between June 2014 and July 2016, Dr Islam had a series of meetings and email exchanges with Apple the technology underlying the then-pending patent applications. During the exchanges, Apple was offered the opportunity to license or acquire the technology, but the company had declined. The lawsuit stated that Dr. Islam had met and was corresponding with Apple employees, Dr. Michael O’Reilly and Michael Hillman during that period. However, in December 21, 2017, it is claimed that Dr. O’Reilly had emailed Dr. Islam stating “We [Apple] don’t wish to receive any information about any of your IP [Intellectual Property].” It also claims that by that day, Apple knew the claim of the scope of all four the Patents-in-Suit. The lawsuit seeks compensation for the damage caused by Apple’s infringement, court expenses and other relief that Omni MedSci is entitled to.
The lawsuit comes at a time with major platforms are pulling their apps from WatchOS. A few days ago, Instagram joined the likes of eBay, Amazon, Google Maps and Twitter in removing their app from the platform. The report notes that the recent development may be due to the new restriction that Apple is enforcing in which updates to Watch apps must user WatchOS 2 SDK or later, while new watch apps have to be built with the WatchOS 4 SDK or later. As a result, developers either had to rework the software, or drop it altogether.
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