Earlier this week, a federal judge in the US said that Apple is facing a claim that states that it is illegally holding a monopoly over its heart rate monitoring apps on its Apple Watch in the United States market.
According to a Reuters report, US District Judge Jeffrey White stated that AliveCor Inc has claimed that it can prove that the Cupertino based giant has violated federal antitrust law. As per the claim, the iPhone maker allegedly has “complete control” on the market over similar apps. For those unaware, AliveCor Inc is behind the SmartRythm app that alerts the users to irregular heartbeats.
The judge added that “AliveCor alleges that Apple made changes to the heart rate algorithm that made it effectively impossible for third parties to inform a user when to take an ECG. Plaintiff’s allegations plausibly establish that Apple’s conduct was anticompetitive.” At the same time, Judge White also dismissed a separate claim for AliveCor, which claimed that Apple maintained an illegal monopoly over its ECG enabled smartwatches. Unfortunately, Apple has yet to provide any comments regarding this matter. Although, this isn’t the first time AliveCor has filed a complaint against the brand.
Back in 2020, the company had accused Apple for infringing on its patents based on its ECG features. In 2021, it also claimed that AliveCor was accused of changing the heart rate algorithm, which gave its proprietary system an “unfair competitive edge” over its competitors or possibly even putting “countless AliveCor users’ lives in danger” since they rely on their systems to offer them alerts. However, the American brand had countered this claim by saying that it was an “uncontroversial proposition that product improvement by itself” and did not violate the federal Sherman antitrust law.
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