Recently, a federal judge in the US said that Apple was facing a lawsuit alleging that Apple illegally monopolized the heart rate monitoring application on the Apple Watch in the United States.
According to a report from Reuters, the judge named Jeffery White said the company AliveCor Inch had claimed to prove that the Cupertino-based giant had violated federal antitrust laws.
AliveCor Ins itself is the company behind the creation of the SmartRythm application which will alert its users about an irregular heartbeat.
"AliveCor alleges that Apple made changes to its heart rate algorithm that effectively do not allow third parties to notify users when to perform an EKG. Plaintiffs' allegations reasonably establish that Apple's behavior is antitrust antitrust," Judge White said as quoted by us from Gizmochina, Wednesday (23/3/2022).
At the same time, Judge White also dismissed a separate claim for AliveCor claiming that Apple maintains an illegal monopoly on ECG-enabled smartwatches.
Unfortunately, Apple has not provided any comment regarding this matter. This isn't the first time AliveCor has filed a complaint against the iPhone maker.
In its May 2021 lawsuit, privately owned AliveCor has accused Apple of altering the Apple Watch's heart rate algorithm to gain an unfair competitive advantage over its rivals. They also mention that this puts the lives of countless AliveCor users at risk.
However, Apple has denied the claims and said they were groundless accusations. Apple said product upgrades were appropriate and did not violate antitrust laws.