Fitness tracker giant Fitbit has filed a complaint against Koninkjijke Philips N.V., seeking a declaratory judgment in a potential patent infringement case, arising from an International Trade Commission investigation filed by the defendant.
The patents-in-suit are U.S. Patent No. 7,845,228 (the “’228 Patent”), 9,820,698 (the “’698 Patent”), and 9,717,464 (the “’464 Patent”). The complaint was filed in the California Northern District Court. Fitbit is represented by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. The suit follows
In December 2019, defendant Philips filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission against Fitbit. The ITC complaint sought to “bar importation or sale of Fitbit’s entire current line of smartwatches and trackers as allegedly infringing Philips’s Patents-in-Suit.” Philips sought a cease-and-desist order for Fitbit’s current smartwatches and trackers. Philips stated that its products use the material in the Patents-in-Suit and that it sells these products in the United States. Additionally, Philips claimed that Fitbit’s products are an “unauthorized use of [its] patented inventions,” which is “unlawful and unfair” and this conduct “threatens Philips’s own U.S. domestic industry commercializing these patents.”
Fitbit has denied these patent infringement claims and alleged that Philips “continues to seek to disrupt Fitbit’s business and keep Fitbit’s health-promoting products from the public based on patents that Fitbit’s products do not infringe.” `
In its complaint for declaratory judgment, Fitbit claims that “[n]one of Fitbit’s smartwatches and trackers meet all of the claim elements recited in any claim of the ’228 patent.” Fitbit explains that none of its smartwatches and trackers “comprise the ‘activity monitor’” in claim 1 of the ’228 patent. Fitbit’s products do not have “a processor operable to receive the sensor signals from the measurement unit and to process the sensor signals in accordance with a predetermined method, characterized in that the activity monitor is operable to monitor and process the sensor signals discontinuously in time and the processor is operable to monitor the sensor signals in turn.” These statements are not applicable to Fitbit’s smartwatches and trackers because these “do not comprise the activity monitor…‘wherein the processor is operable to monitor the sensor signals discontinuously in time.’” The smartwatches and trackers also do not use a “method of monitoring activity” and the products are not “receiving the sensor signals and processing the sensor signals in accordance with a predetermined method, characterized in that the sensor signals are monitored and processed discontinuously in time and the sensor signals are monitored in turn.”
Fitbit states that it does not infringe upon the ’698 patent because its products to no not “meet all of the claim elements recited in any claim of the ’698 patent.” For instance, Fitbit’s smartwatches and trackers are allegedly not a “physiological monitoring device,” meaning they do not have “an electronic digital signal processing (DSP) device configured to perform operations including: computing a body motion artifact (BMA) signal as a function of time from the non-body motion physiological parameter signal, and computing an actigraphy signal as a function of time from the BMA signal” as stated in the claim. Similar, Fitbit alleges that its devices do not compute a BMA signal “as a function of time from the non-body motion physiological parameter signal.”
Fitbit claims it has not infringed upon the ’464 patent, stating that its smartwatches and trackers are not used to execute a “method for minimizing the effects of motion artifact on sensor readings taken during the continuous transdermal monitoring of a body part in motion.” For example, the devices are not monitoring an accelerometer signal as described in claim 1 of the patent. Fitbit states that its smartwatches and trackers do not “comprise the ‘system for minimizing the effects of motion artifact on sensor reading taken during the continuous transdermal monitoring of a body part in motion.”
Fitbit has sought a declaratory judgment in its favor stating that Fitbit’s smartwatches and trackers do not infringe upon the Patents-in-Suit and to declare the case exceptions to award Fitbit its costs and fees.
