Apple is facing a ban crisis, and the United States will decide next Monday whether the Apple Watch can continue to be sold in the US market.

CTOnews.com, February 18 (Xinhua)-- the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled in December last year that Apple's Apple Watch with an electrocardiogram (ECG) function infringed the patents of medical device maker AliveCor Inc.

The ban will take effect as soon as next week, meaning Apple's Apple Watch Series 8 smartwatch will not be available in the US market. At present, Apple's only solution is to lobby the Biden government to prevent the ban from taking effect.

Apple has hired Shara Aranoff, a lobbyist for Covington & Burling (a former chairman of ITC), to ensure that Apple Watch can continue to be sold.

The Biden administration will decide next Monday whether to uphold ITC's infringement ruling or support Apple to lift the ban.

CTOnews.com with a report on the incident:

AliveCor last year accused Apple of infringing three patents related to its KardiaBand, an Apple Watch accessory that monitors a user's heart rate, detects abnormalities and performs ECG to identify heart problems such as atrial fibrillation.

AliveCor, based in Mountain View, Calif., stopped selling KardiaBand in 2018 after Apple introduced the ECG function to Apple Watch. AliveCor applied to the US International Trade Commission last year, arguing that Apple had been copying its technology since Apple Watch Series 4 and drove AliveCor out of the market by making the wearOS incompatible with KardiaBand.

Apple Watch Series 4 through Series 8 have ECG technology. On December 6, 2022, at the request of Apple, the Patent trial and Appeals Board of the United States Patent and Trademark Office invalidated the AliveCor patent in a related case. The tech giant also filed a counterclaim in San Francisco federal court on suspicion of infringing its patents.