Apple Asks Board to Nix Patent Underlying Covid-Tracker Lawsuit

Apple Inc. urged an administrative patent board to review and cancel a patent covering location-based services focusing on predicting public safety risks, which the tech giant had been sued for allegedly infringing with a Covid-19 exposure notification system.

ALD Social LLC’s US Patent No. 9,198,054 covers a “well-known” concept of crowd monitoring and alerting first responders that would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, Apple said in its Sept. 8 petition seeking inter partes review filed at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

The petition comes two months after a California federal judge dismissed ...