Apple Wins Big Pharma Backing for Redo of Patent Ownership Case

Apple Inc. won the support of a pharmaceutical industry trade group, as well as other groups and research universities, for its effort to get the full Federal Circuit to rehear an ownership dispute over two health sensor patents.

Omni MedSci Inc. alleged the Apple Watch infringed its U.S. Patent Nos. 9,651,533 and 9,861,286. Apple argued that Omni doesn’t own the patents because the inventor who sold them to Omni had automatically assigned them and other future inventions to the University of Michigan, the inventor’s former employer.

A divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed with Omni …