A patent troll that has sued more than 80 organizations by laying expansive cases to Internet-associated "wearables" might close to the end of its road.
The patent appeals board at the US Patent and Trademark Office has consented to rethink 16 patent cases possessed by Sportbrain Holdings, LLC. The Patent Office's decision comes only three days after Sportbrain filed a claim against Apple, which according to Sportbrain, Apple Watch violates US Patent No. 7,454,002 - Integrating personal data capturing functionality into a portable computing device and a wireless communication device, Arstechnica reported.
Sportbrain's attorneys in many of lawsuits have contended that its patent qualifies it to gather royalties on a tremendous scope of gadgets and softwares that assemble client wellness data. Starting in January 2016, Sportbrain unleashed a deluge of claims against organizations associated with watches and different wearables, such as from Garmin, Fitbit, Pebble, and Nike. It also sued tech organizations like Apple, Samsung and HP, and watchmakers including Timex, Tag Heuer and Nixon.
Popular fitness apps like Strava and Aetna were filed onto lawsuit over software. Sportbrain contends that the medical coverage organization encroaches its patent with its "Get Active" online platform.
On Feb. 10, three days after Sportbrain's Apple claim, the USPTO affirmed the patent review, taking note of two earlier licenses are probably going to have secured the parts of gathering information and analyzing it on a web server incorporated into the patent, Apple Insider reported. A patent from 1999 documented by Nike says the collection of data from products, such as an article of footwear, while Liquid Spark filed another patent for a GPS-based monitor in 1998.
If the patent is discredited in the bury partes survey (IPR) by the USPTO, it is likely that it would crumple Sportbrain's claim against Apple, and other comparable prosecution endeavors. IPRs are thought to be less expensive for gatherings to nullify licenses than by experiencing courts, with a few or the greater part of a patent's cases expelled in the dominant part of IPR procedures.
