Judge Strikes Down Patent Claims by EHR Vendor
A United States District Court has ruled against an EHR vendor which claimed broad patent protection over shared health information.
A United States District Court has ruled against an EHR vendor which claimed broad patent protection over shared health information.
Judge Otis Wright of the Central District of California invalidated five claims in one of Los Angeles-based MyMedicalRecords patents in a case involving Walgreens, Quest Diagnostics, WebMD, and more, according to a blog post from Electronic Frontier Foundation activist Adi Kamdar.
According to Kamdar, Wright's decision is one of many new cases that have implemented the Supreme Courts recent ruling in Alice v CLS Bank. In the case decided by Wright, Kamdar said MyMedicalRecords asserted a patent that covered a method of providing online personal health records in a private, secure way.
"Wright rightfully found that 'the concept of secure record access and management, in the context of personal health records or not, is an age-old idea,' and is therefore abstract," Kamdar wrote. Under the precedent set in the Alice case, Kamdar said, an abstract concept could be patentable if its associated with some sort of inventive concept that goes beyond just the abstract idea.
"In the case of MyMedicalRecords patent, though, the additional claims fell flat, involving only 'routine, conventional functions of a computer and server,'" Kamdar wrote. "Under Alice, this patent is as good as gone."
Wright's decision is available here.
Judge Otis Wright of the Central District of California invalidated five claims in one of Los Angeles-based MyMedicalRecords patents in a case involving Walgreens, Quest Diagnostics, WebMD, and more, according to a blog post from Electronic Frontier Foundation activist Adi Kamdar.
According to Kamdar, Wright's decision is one of many new cases that have implemented the Supreme Courts recent ruling in Alice v CLS Bank. In the case decided by Wright, Kamdar said MyMedicalRecords asserted a patent that covered a method of providing online personal health records in a private, secure way.
"Wright rightfully found that 'the concept of secure record access and management, in the context of personal health records or not, is an age-old idea,' and is therefore abstract," Kamdar wrote. Under the precedent set in the Alice case, Kamdar said, an abstract concept could be patentable if its associated with some sort of inventive concept that goes beyond just the abstract idea.
"In the case of MyMedicalRecords patent, though, the additional claims fell flat, involving only 'routine, conventional functions of a computer and server,'" Kamdar wrote. "Under Alice, this patent is as good as gone."
Wright's decision is available here.
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