A Boston federal judge ruled Thursday that the lone current patent in Philips North America LLC's infringement complaint against Google LLC's Fitbit is invalid, thereby ending the companies' battle for the time being.
Last year, Fitbit and Garmin Ltd prevailed in a related Philips patent issue before the United States International Trade Commission.
Philips has accused numerous Fitbit devices of infringing on its patent for "interactive exercise monitoring" in this lawsuit. The invention, however, cannot be registered since it covers an abstract idea, according to Chief U.S. District Judge Dennis Saylor.
Philips NV's US subsidiary claimed in 2019 that Fitbit's fitness trackers violated four patents related to its wearable health-monitoring equipment.
Philips withdrew its allegations against one of the patents, the court invalidated another, and a U.S. Patent Office tribunal cancelled the third, in a decision Philips has appealed.
Fitbit's appeal for a ruling that the case's lone remaining exercise-tracking patent was invalid was granted on Thursday by Saylor. According to Saylor, the patent covers "nothing more than the collection, processing, and presentation of material that has been discovered – individually and collectively — to be abstract concepts."
Fitbit's contention that the patent's alleged invention of "offloading" data processing operations from a user's phone to an outside server was an inventive, patent-eligible concept was similarly rejected by the judge.