A U.S. District Court judge has rejected an electronic health record vendor's claim that it had broad patent protection over shared health information, Health Data Management reports. (Goth, Health Data Management, 1/9).

Background

According to a blog post from Electronic Frontier Foundation activist Adi Kamdar, the ruling is one of several new cases that have used the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Alice v. CLS Bank, which essentially said an abstract idea cannot be patentable simply by adding "'do it on a computer'" (Kamdar, "DeepLinks Blog," Electronic Frontier Foundation, 1/7).

Lawsuit Details

In the lawsuit, EHR vendor MyMedicalRecords claimed patent protection over a method of collecting, accessing and managing personal health records in a manner that is secure and private. The vendor alleged that several companies had infringed on the patent, including:

• Jar Dogs and Allscripts Healthcare Solutions;
• Quest Diagnostics;
• Walgreen; and
• WebMD and WebMD Health Services (MyMedicalRecords v. Walgreen et al., 12/23/14).

Ruling Details

In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Otis Wright invalidated five claims under MyMedicalRecords' patent (Health Data Management, 1/9).

Specifically, Wright said that one of the patent's claims "does not contain inventive concepts that make it patent-eligible" and that "additional limitations" in the four other dependent claims "do not add 'significantly more' to the underlying abstract idea -- collecting, accessing and managing personal health records in a secure and private manner -- so as to impart patent eligibility" (MyMedicalRecords v. Walgreen et al., 12/23/14).