Apple’s HealthKit Slapped With Patent Lawsuit

When Apple announced its most recent quarterly earnings report last week, CEO Tim Cook assured investors that while iPad sales slumped, enterprise-focused efforts would revive the technology. He was referencing an initiative launched through a partnership with IBM to develop mobile apps and software for the workplace, and one of the most high-profile results of that partnership so far is the development of HealthKit. The software is a Data-as-a-Service tool that helps health care professionals digitize operations through an array of tools and apps.

But it appears that Apple is in legal trouble for HealthKit. Reports emerged Sunday (May 3) that Apple has been sued for patent infringement regarding HealthKit technology by New Jersey-based LMG 3 Marketing and Development Corp.

According to reports, LMG 3 is not a patent troll, and holds two patents related to the digitization and storage of a patient’s medical records on a mobile device. Those patents were granted in 2002, 12 years before Apple unveiled HealthKit and a slew of mobile apps aimed at health care providers. Much of the new tools similarly digitize and store patient records for easy access by those providers.

LMG 3 claims that Apple touted the adoption of these tools by major health care institutions, some of which had already been approached by LMG 3 with its technology.

The plaintiff is arguing that its invention addresses three concerns of patient record storage: data security, rapid accessibility of the information, and universal compatibility with record management software and hardware, and in doing so created a “novel technology” they patented, leading to the development of the MyRECS device.

LMG 3’s complaint not only highlights Apple’s launch of the HealthKit, which the company argues infringes on their patents, but also notes the assertion made by Apple during HealthKit’s unveiling in 2014 that this tool is a “novel system” for the health care force.

“More specifically,” the complaint reads, “during the 2014 event, Apple outlines and claimed to have resolved the very development paradox Plaintiff LMG had successfully overcome in 2002 and 2003, in essentially the same way LMG had.”

Reports said the lawsuit was filed late Thursday (April 30) in New Jersey District Court. Apple has not yet commented publically on the allegations.