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U.S. judge rules Apple Watch infringed Masimo's pulse oximeter patent
- BuckyBeaver 4y ago[flagged]
- factsarelolz 4y ago[flagged]
- amf12 4y agoIts not racist because it wasn't meant to be prejudicial or to treat different races discriminately. It has an unfortunate bias (without racist intent), that hopefully will reduce and go away with better models. Apple and Google have already started with their real skin tone processing in cameras.
- a4isms 4y agoThe comment you're replying to is obviously being sarcastic and trying to "stir the pot." But I will respond to you seriously. Most Americans who use the word "racist" mean "intentionally and adversarially racist," e.g. The three boys who called me a "spook" and assaulted me on a Toronto subway platform in the early 1970s. Apple and their feature is manifestly not that kind of racist, and I think it's misleading to use the word racist by itself as an adjective, because this is the connotation most people associate with the word." (I personally only associate that connotation with the noun "racist," as in "Hitler was a racist.") There is also a systemic kind of racism, where no one person participating in a system is a racist, but the overall outcome of the system's behaviour is to be discriminatory in an unjust manner against people of a particular race. I think that's something you acknowledge by saying that the outcome of a bunch of people making what they felt were reasonable choices in the system ended up making something with an "unfortunate bias." And from what I've read, Apple realize that sometimes a product needs to evolve to be more inclusive and takes steps to address that.
- InCityDreams 4y ago[flagged]
- amf12 4y agoThat's a fair point. I agree that there could be systemic racism, which is exactly what it is in this case. When most people say "racist" they don't mean "bias" or "systemic racism", but the overt kind. I think there should be a difference in the perception of the two kinds, even though we should improve in both cases. I'll also add that when people responsible don't take any steps to correct systemic racism, it should be considered the overt kind.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> when people responsible don't take any steps to correct systemic racism, it should be considered the overt kind The problem with the state of our debate is people smeared a word used for overt, intentional racism across all manner of unintentional behaviour. That not only reasonably infuriated folks. It also gave cover for the original kind of racism to duck under. (A similar thing has happened to the term violence.)
- BuckyBeaver 4y agoExactly. Hence the quotes around "racist." It's pathetic that some pompous asses down-modded and FLAGGED that comment, which simply and jokingly referred to a ridiculous and widely-reported claim.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bdcravens 4y agoI hope they license it rather than disable the feature.
- ontarionick 4y agoDefinitely. Disabling it would be a straight up loss for the consumer. I actually only upgraded the watch because of the pulse oximeter - I had a need for it and wouldn’t have been able to justify the upgrade otherwise.
- sosodev 4y agoIs there room for "convergent evolution" with patent law? It seems to me that the odds of developing similar systems are very high if two companies with light based sensors try to develop pulse oximetery.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mmastrac 4y agoNope, you need to be quick to file. There is, however, an exception: if an invention is likely to be obvious to a person skilled in the art given access to prior art, the invention is not considered not patentable
- taeric 4y agoThat exception is laughably weak in bleeding edge fields. That is, if "skilled in the art" is limited in audience, then that someone else "did it first" could be reduced to them being the first to need to do it. Which is terrible in the cases where everyone that goes down a route will have to solve the same problem.
- AlbertCory 4y agoFor an in-depth analysis of "obviousness" as it applies to software: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2399580 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2399580 "obvious to try" is probably what you're imagining. This is a real legal doctrine, and it's deplorably underutilized with software, as I explain. I had a patent lawyer read over this carefully, and he took particular interest in the notion that, as he put it, "software engineers have a bag of tricks they use." We all know that we do. But the legal system needs some kind of official blessing for the contents of the bag, and "our" ACM and IEEE are never going to give us one.
- bradknowles 4y agoThis method fails in fields where the patent office is explicitly forced to avoid hiring people in that field. So, they cannot reasonably know what prior art might be in that field, if for example they are not allowed to hire anyone with a CS degree, for example. Yes, that was the case for a long time. Only recently have they been allowed to hire patent examiners with CS degrees. So, yay -- fucked up USPTO, as per usual.
- zamadatix 4y agoThis article has a bit more detail https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/apple-loses-first-round-of-masimo-bid-to-ban-us-watch-imports https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/apple-loses-first-round...
- t-writescode 4y agoInteresting bit from this article: > In November, a California federal judge ruled that a former Masimo engineer stole trade secrets related to Masimo’s pulse oximetry technology. The judge blocked US sales by True Wearables Inc.—a company launched by the engineer after a stint at Apple—of the Oxxiom device “in its current iteration that includes the trade secrets.”
- AlbertCory 4y agoDoes anyone have access such that they can put things on archive? Bloomberg put all the details behind their paywall. Here's the actual patent, unpaywalled: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10945648B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10945648B2/en Claim 1 (as claim language goes, this isn't too bad): 1. A user-worn device configured to non-invasively determine measurements of physiological parameter of a user, the user-worn device comprising: a plurality of light emitting diodes (LEDs); four photodiodes configured to receive light emitted by the LEDs, the four photodiodes being arranged to capture light at different quadrants of tissue of a user; a protrusion comprising a convex surface and a plurality of openings extending through the protrusion, the openings arranged over the photodiodes and configured to allow light to pass through the protrusion to the photodiodes; and one or more processors configured to receive one or more signals from at least one of the photodiodes and determine measurements of oxygen saturation of the user.
- donmcronald 4y agoAre they even accurate enough to be useful? Today my Garmin watch told me I was at 85% in the middle of the afternoon when I was feeling pretty good and 100% towards the end of the day when I was feeling a bit tired. The way I understand it, and I could be totally wrong, that’s somewhere between dead and impossible within the span of 2 hours.
- cbo100 4y agoI've found the watch to be within a percent or two of both store bought and hospital based "finger tip" meters. You get the occasional outliers from a bad reading but in general that's how I've experienced, and I've had nurses and doctors say that they are "good enough". And yeah in my experience, anything less than 90-93% in a hospital and they will have you on high flow oxygen pretty quick. So 85% as a single bad reading is fine, but a sustained 85% on a watch means you probably want to head to a medical facility.
- tsimionescu 4y agoNote that, like all constant health monitoring with simplistic sensors, no one actually knows if the Apple Watch is good enough for any medical purpose, or potentially actively harmful. There simply haven't been enough (or sometimes, any) tests comparing what are normal/safe readings for continuous monitoring in normal life settings of many of these parameters, especially for healthy people, and doubly especially for these types of non-invasive simplistic sensors. Basically, we don't know how much should a healthy person's pulse/SpO2/... as measured with a smart watch sensor vary during the day. We also don't know which values, if any, should be considered emergencies, or which values should scare you into a programmed visit. Note that over-monitoring is often just as harmful as under-monitoring in medicine, especially give that the vast majority of the population is healthy (so any false positive is likely to affect many more people than a false negative does, even if in lighter ways).
- kranke155 4y agoHuh? How do we not know all these things if we can just compare it to a finger tip medical oxymeter ?
- chollida1 4y agoNo mention of Garmin whose main watches all have Pulse ox sensors in them, so either they licensed the tech or they have their own implementation. I'm glad I couldn't find Garmin here, I love their sensor data.
- zinekeller 4y agoIt seems that the difference is that a previous Masimo employee then worked at Apple, lending credence that the patent was directly violated because they stole Masimo's trade secrets. Maybe Garmin was advised by Masimo (and then subsequently negotiated a license) for the patents? Alternatively, Garmin may have different implementation that avoids the metioned patents.
- cormacrelf 4y agoIf it’s patented it cannot be a trade secret. And vice versa. Trade secrets are defined by not having been shared yet, patents are defined by having been published publicly. Patents give you a temporary monopoly in exchange for contributing to public knowledge what might otherwise remain a trade secret.
- jackvalentine 4y agoWhat is the downside to keeping things as a trade secret? Someone else might independently ‘invent’ the same thing and you’re SOL?
- robg 4y agoThe report described a dramatic case wherein Apple reportedly had met with Masimo and was interested in a deal to incorporate their advanced technology associated with what became the PPG sensors on the backside of the Apple Watch. Yet once Apple met with Marcelo Lamego the Chief Technical Officer and Research Scientist of Cercacor and Michael O’Reilly, its Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs, they poached the two employees in order to cut Masimo and Cercacor out of any deal and royalties. https://www.patentlyapple.com/2020/09/apple-sued-a-second-time-by-masimo-for-infringing-patents-relating-to-ppg-sensors-and-apples-latest-blood-oxygen-feature.html https://www.patentlyapple.com/2020/09/apple-sued-a-second-ti...
- anonymousiam 4y agoI wonder if my Oura ring also infringes... https://ouraring.com https://ouraring.com https://support.ouraring.com/hc/en-us/articles/7328398760851-Blood-Oxygen-Sensing-SpO2- https://support.ouraring.com/hc/en-us/articles/7328398760851...