(Updated with statement from Teladoc)
Telehealth company American Well has sued competitor Teladoc, claiming infringement of intellectual property rights.
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In a suit filed Monday in federal court in Boston, American Well accuses Teladoc of infringing a patent for technology that connects consumers to telehealth service providers. The patent, held by American Well co-founder Dr. Roy Schoenberg since 2009, is for, in part:
“accessing a data repository that stores information pertaining to medical service providers, including present availability of the medical service providers for participating in a consultation; receiving in a computer, indications that members of a pool of medical service providers have become presently available; receiving in the computer, a request from a consumer of services to consult with a medical service provider; identifying in the computer, an available member of the pool; and establishing a real-time communication channel between the consumer of services and the identified member of the pool.”
American Well claims in its lawsuit that Teladoc technology incorporates “each of these elements.” American Well bases this on claims Teladoc made in its recent S-1 registration statement, as the latter is preparing for an initial public offering.
In the S-1 filing, Teladoc stated, “we do not believe our business is dependent to a material degree on trademarks, patents, copyrights or trade secrets.” However, American Well said in the lawsuit that it recently rejected a Teladoc request to license some of the patented IP.
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Teladoc, according to American Well, also appealed to a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office panel in March to review four claims in the patent at issue. While the appeal is still pending, American Well said it shows that Teladoc “was concerned that it infringed” the patent.
In an e-mailed statement, Teladoc denied the accusations and explained its reasoning behind the appeal to the USPTO.
“American Well’s action today is in direct response to Teladoc’s March 24 petition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to invalidate certain American Well Corp. patents,” Teladoc CEO Jason Gorevic said in the statement.
“We very strongly believe that those patents are invalid. For one, American Well’s claims of being ‘first-to-market’ are demonstrably false due to the fact that Teladoc and others were providing telehealth long before American Well was even formed as a company. Second, the patents in question are impermissibly broad and cover matters that are too obvious to be patented. We will continue to pursue our petition to have American Well’s patents invalidate,” Gorevic said.
“As for today’s action by American Well, Teladoc will vigorously defend itself as it would in any other non-meritorious, ordinary-course litigation.”
American Well CEO and co-founder Dr. Ido Schoenberg told MedCity News that the decision to sue “was driven by our desire to protect our intellectual property,”
Schoenberg, the brother of Roy Schoenberg, would not discuss details of the lawsuit, but said that his company offers a superior experience to other telehealth companies. “We believe that telehealth can do much, much more” than offer one-time consultations with physicians that do not know their patients personally.
“Our vision for telehealth is to connect physicians in the community with patients they already know,” Schoenberg said.
Ideally, the system would collect data from wearables, upload information to the cloud, apply analytics and supply clinicians with best practices for treating patients remotely. “We would like to allow people to age gracefully in their homes,” Schoenberg said.
He also wants to simply clinician workflow by incorporating insurance eligibility checking into the telehealth process and by automatically populating electronic health records with telehealth documentation. “We want to eliminate double charting,” he said.
