Summary
AliveCor, Inc. appeals the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's final written decisions finding its three patents related to cardiac arrhythmia detection systems unpatentable as obvious over prior art references. The Federal Circuit reviews the Board's obviousness findings under a substantial evidence standard and addresses AliveCor's claim that Apple violated discovery obligations by withholding secondary consideration evidence from parallel ITC proceedings. The court affirms the Board's decision, holding that the prior art adequately teaches the claimed machine learning and confirmation steps, and that AliveCor forfeited its discovery challenge by failing to raise it during the IPR proceedings.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the PTAB erred in finding the machine‑learning limitations of the ’499 and ’731 patents obvious.
- Whether the PTAB erred in finding the “confirming” step of the ’731 and ’941 patents obvious.
- Whether Apple violated its discovery obligations by failing to produce secondary‑consideration evidence from the parallel ITC proceeding.
Holdings
- The Board’s obviousness findings are supported by substantial evidence and are affirmed.
- The Board’s finding that Shmueli teaches a confirming step using ECG data is supported by substantial evidence and is affirmed.
- AliveCor forfeited the issue by not raising it before the PTAB; the Court therefore affirms without addressing the merits.
Key quotations
“The Board’s findings are supported by substantial evidence and are affirmed.” (at 1)
“Shmueli’s Figure 7 depicts collection of a patient’s ECG data followed by searching for correlations between the PPG and ECG signals to confirm the presence of arrhythmia.” (at 1)
Factual background
AliveCor owns three patents covering smartwatch-based detection and confirmation of cardiac arrhythmias using PPG and ECG sensors. Apple challenged the patents in inter partes review, asserting that machine‑learning and confirming steps were obvious in view of prior‑art references Hu (1997), Li (2012) and Shmueli (PCT 2012/140559).
Procedural history
The PTAB found all claims of three AliveCor patents unpatentable as obvious. AliveCor appealed to the Federal Circuit. The ITC also issued an initial decision upholding the patents, but the issue was not raised before the PTAB.