Apple has scored another legal win in its ongoing legal dispute with heart monitoring company AliveCor, as a federal appeals court has upheld a 2024 ruling that found that changes Apple made to the Apple Watch were lawful product improvements instead of anticompetitive actions.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court decision that rejected AliveCor’s antitrust claims. AliveCor had argued that by replacing its Heart Rate during Physical Observation (HRPO) algorithm with its heart rate neural network (HRNN) algorithm in watchOS 5, Apple had illegally monopolized the market for heart rate analysis apps.
AliveCor argued that Apple changed the algorithm merely to prevent its ECG KardiaBand from being able to identify irregular heart rhythms, as Apple was looking to “eliminate opposition” in the heart rate analysis space. AliveCor wanted the court to order Apple to reinstate the old algorithm.
For Apple’s part, it argued that AliveCor did not have the right to dictate Apple’s design decisions, and that the request to support the older heart rate technology would require the court to be a day-to-day enforcer of how Apple engineers its products.
The court agreed with Apple. So, AliveCor appealed the ruling. Apple’s victory has now been affirmed by the Ninth Circuit.
“The undisputed evidence shows as a matter of law that Apple’s refusal to share HRPO data was not anticompetitive,” the court wrote, adding that even if some form of heart rate data access were essential for competing in the market, AliveCor’s claim would still fail because Apple provides app developers with access to the same Tachogram API data that Apple’s Irregular Rhythm Notification feature uses.
The appeals court also ruled that Apple had a duty to share its proprietary data with competitors, saying that antitrust laws generally impose no obligation for companies to cooperate with their rivals, saying such a requirement “would implicate the same concerns regarding incentives to innovate and judicial competency that the Supreme Court has articulated.”
