Fitbit Wins Challenge to Health Technology Patent at Tribunal

Fitbit Inc. convinced a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office tribunal that part of a health-monitoring patent is invalid, after an appeals court found problems with the tribunal’s original review.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board in August 2018 upheld a handful of claims in Valencell Inc.'s U.S. Patent No. 8,923,941. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last year told the board to take another look at those claims.

The PTAB said in a decision Monday that Fitbit had shown the claims are invalid because they would have been obvious based on earlier inventions.

The patent is ...