Court: Patient use of Epic's MyChart can qualify as patent infringement
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San Francisco-based McKesson holds a patent on a method of electronic communication between providers and patients, and alleged in its initial complaint that Verona, Wis.-based Epic induced customers to infringe upon that patent. The lawsuit targeted Epic’s MyChart patient health record, which allows providers and patients to electronically communicate.
The district court had ruled that neither Epic nor its customers (providers) completed all steps necessary to commit patent infringement. Patients completed some of these steps when they used MyChart to contact their providers and the lower court determined that Epic hadn’t committed patent infringement because it didn’t direct or control patients to complete these steps.
The appellate court interpreted the law differently. “We hold that all the steps of a claimed method must be performed in order to find induced infringement, but that is not necessary to prove that all the steps were committed by a single entity,” the court’s Aug. 31 majority opinion read.
The long-standing case will be returned to the district court for a final decision consistent with the appellate court's majority opinion.
The majority opinion is available in its entirety on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Court's website.