Polar patent ruling clears the way for Suunto and Firstbeat
Two major names in fitness tech landed on opposite sides of a legal outcome that has been a couple of years in the making. A United States appeals court has confirmed that Polar Electro Oy’s heart rate processing patent cannot be enforced, closing the case in favor of Suunto, Amer Sports and Firstbeat Technologies.
The dispute centered on US Patent No. 6,537,227, a filing that described a chest worn wireless heart rate monitor along with a method for calculating maximum energy expenditure during exercise. Polar argued that its claims protected both the way the data was collected and the way exertion levels were estimated. The defendants disagreed, and the Utah District Court sided with them under Section 101 of the US Patent Act, concluding that the claims covered an abstract idea without a sufficiently inventive concept.
The appeal was handled by the Federal Circuit under case number 24-1801. In a short per curiam decision dated December 3, 2025, the court affirmed the district ruling and dismissed Polar’s challenge. The judgment adopted Rule 36, meaning the panel upheld the decision without writing a detailed opinion. The case itself was originally filed in 2024, closing a long loop of litigation.
What the ruling means for heart rate tech
This decision removes any uncertainty for Suunto, Amer Sports and Firstbeat regarding their ongoing use of chest strap and exertion analysis methods. The court agreed that the patent claims did not go beyond an abstract process for interpreting heart rate data. That interpretation matched the district court’s application of the Alice test, a framework commonly used to determine whether software and algorithm based patents qualify for protection.
For the industry, this ruling reinforces a trend that has shaped several recent fitness tech patent disputes. Claims that rely primarily on processing or interpreting physiological data need to demonstrate clear inventive steps beyond the underlying idea. Companies have increasingly faced challenges when patents hinge on high level descriptions of how data should be handled rather than specific new mechanisms for doing so.
A long chapter closes
This case never hinged on a hardware issue. Instead, it focused on whether Polar’s approach to calculating exertion from heart rate inputs carried enough technical weight to receive patent protection. The courts concluded that it did not. While this ends Polar’s claim in the United States, the ruling only affects this specific patent and does not have any impact on the company’s existing consumer devices.
For Suunto and Firstbeat, the decision removes the final legal risk associated with this dispute. It also means their historical methods for interpreting physiological signals can continue without modification. Given how central these metrics are to training load, recovery scoring, and performance analytics, the clarity is likely welcome for their product teams.
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