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The laws are supposed to reward Masimo for their innovation by Apple paying them an appropriate licensing fee. Apple decided to circumvent that by milking them

The laws are supposed to reward Masimo for their innovation by Apple paying them an appropriate licensing fee. Apple decided to circumvent that by milking them for IP in a feigned acquisition attempt and then headhunting their engineers and are going to be punished financially for not rewarding innovation. The law is working as intended.

notatoad 3y ago
right, but it sure looks like masimo's "innovation" is filing the patent paperwork for the general concept of how pulse oximeters have always worked, not anything new they invented. filing patents for something you didn't invent is not the law working as intended.
- jojobas 3y ago
  If that was the case Apple would have overturned this patent on the basis of prior art. I'm inclined to trust ITC on this one more than a random dude from the internet, even though he is not a toad.
  - photonbeam 3y ago
    Or, the system itself has become just stupid
    - kelnos 3y ago
      Maybe so, but just because darling-child Apple is the one on the wrong end of a lawsuit, it doesn't mean there's no merit.
- t0mas88 3y ago
  If that was the only innovation, why would Apple go and have several meetings with them and then try to hire their engineers? Sounds like they had something that Apple wanted, and Apple decided not to pay for it. This case is the result, which certainly will be settled at some point.
  - ffgjgf1 3y ago
    Well they might have seen the patents and just had meetings because of that. > with them and then try to hire their engineers This doesn’t seem to be particularly relevant. Apple was trying to entire a new field so they hired people who already work in it
    - jojobas 3y ago
      I guess if Apple started harvesting live human tissue for use in their gadgets you'd have some justification for it too.
      - ffgjgf1 3y ago
        I see you have weird imagination. What even makes you say something as silly as this without any provocation? I don’t care particularly about Apple or their watches. Yet even Apple can’t win against a patent troll that means any smaller company would never be able to develop and sell their products without paying Masimo.
pembrook 3y ago
In some narrow cases I see the value in patents motivating financial investment in original research. But most of the time this does not apply. Optical pulse oximeters are an obvious incremental thing, and with zero knowledge of the space I don’t think it’s crazy to believe these would have come into existence on the same time frame with or without the existence of patents. Virtually everything humans create or “discover” is an inevitability. We’re all just memetic LLMs, remixing stuff with mildly differing levels of variance. Originality is quaint pre-industrial human myth. That said, Apple would have absolutely done the same thing if they had the patent. So I have zero sympathy for either party. Don’t hate the player, hate the “artificially granted ownership over progress” game.
- prng2021 3y ago
  “We’re all just memetic LLMs, remixing stuff with mildly differing levels of variance.” Einstein upended every other human beings notion of space and time. Copernicus also proposed something preposterous for his time. Would you say they just remixed stuff with mild variance?
  - adrian_b 3y ago
    Copernicus has only revived a theory first proposed millennia before him (in Ancient Greece), but initially rejected for insufficient evidence. Even for Copernicus, his theory was based more on faith than on evidence, because it became possible to measure the stellar parallaxes only much later. When Einstein published his theory of Special Relativity, it did not contain any fact or formula that had not already existed previously in the works of Lorentz, Poincaré and many others. It was just a new and original point of view about which is the meaning of those known relationships (i.e. that it is the speed of light which is constant in all reference systems, while other quantities are variable, instead of making other choices about which quantities are constant and which are variable). His contribution is actually very similar with that of Copernicus, who also did not provide any new fact or relationship, but just a new choice about which position should be considered constant, Sun's or Earth's. Both changes were very small compared with the existing knowledge, but they were very important for enabling further progress. Every progress is really incremental and it adds very little over the existing body of knowledge, even if the addition is essential for any further progress and for improving the practical applications.
ffgjgf1 3y ago
> reward Masimo for their innovation Except there doesn’t seem to be particularly innovative about those patents. Masimo just excepts to be rewarded for filling them..
- jojobas 3y ago
  This seems to be an uninformed opinion. Masimo has been on the cutting edge of pulse-oximetry for decades, and figuring out how to make a low power wrist pulse-oximeter is non-trivial.
  - ffgjgf1 3y ago
    Maybe. These patents seem pretty trivial though. > Masimo has been on the cutting edge of pulse-oximetry Maybe because they built an artificial patent moat around themselves and no other company can compete?
    - mrtree 3y ago
      “Making a wristband pulsioximeter is trivial” Sure sure.
      - ffgjgf1 3y ago
        Are you replying to the right comment? But no, that’s actually the hard part. Something Apple did manage to accomplish quite well though (just like many other smaller companies would be able to do if there were no trivial patents preventing them from doing that).
    - jojobas 3y ago
      Patents expire in 25 years. Either they innovate as hell or you can just verbatim reproduce their model from 25 years ago and compete, you can't have it both ways. Philips and Siemens, of all companies, decided to partner and license the technology, and Apple decided they can toss them around.
      - 3y ago

notatoad 3y ago

right, but it sure looks like masimo's "innovation" is filing the patent paperwork for the general concept of how pulse oximeters have always worked, not anything new they invented. filing patents for something you didn't invent is not the law working as intended.

jojobas 3y ago
If that was the case Apple would have overturned this patent on the basis of prior art. I'm inclined to trust ITC on this one more than a random dude from the internet, even though he is not a toad.
- photonbeam 3y ago
  Or, the system itself has become just stupid
  - kelnos 3y ago
    Maybe so, but just because darling-child Apple is the one on the wrong end of a lawsuit, it doesn't mean there's no merit.
t0mas88 3y ago
If that was the only innovation, why would Apple go and have several meetings with them and then try to hire their engineers? Sounds like they had something that Apple wanted, and Apple decided not to pay for it. This case is the result, which certainly will be settled at some point.
- ffgjgf1 3y ago
  Well they might have seen the patents and just had meetings because of that. > with them and then try to hire their engineers This doesn’t seem to be particularly relevant. Apple was trying to entire a new field so they hired people who already work in it
  - jojobas 3y ago
    I guess if Apple started harvesting live human tissue for use in their gadgets you'd have some justification for it too.
    - ffgjgf1 3y ago
      I see you have weird imagination. What even makes you say something as silly as this without any provocation? I don’t care particularly about Apple or their watches. Yet even Apple can’t win against a patent troll that means any smaller company would never be able to develop and sell their products without paying Masimo.

pembrook 3y ago

In some narrow cases I see the value in patents motivating financial investment in original research. But most of the time this does not apply. Optical pulse oximeters are an obvious incremental thing, and with zero knowledge of the space I don’t think it’s crazy to believe these would have come into existence on the same time frame with or without the existence of patents. Virtually everything humans create or “discover” is an inevitability. We’re all just memetic LLMs, remixing stuff with mildly differing levels of variance. Originality is quaint pre-industrial human myth. That said, Apple would have absolutely done the same thing if they had the patent. So I have zero sympathy for either party. Don’t hate the player, hate the “artificially granted ownership over progress” game.

prng2021 3y ago
“We’re all just memetic LLMs, remixing stuff with mildly differing levels of variance.” Einstein upended every other human beings notion of space and time. Copernicus also proposed something preposterous for his time. Would you say they just remixed stuff with mild variance?
- adrian_b 3y ago
  Copernicus has only revived a theory first proposed millennia before him (in Ancient Greece), but initially rejected for insufficient evidence. Even for Copernicus, his theory was based more on faith than on evidence, because it became possible to measure the stellar parallaxes only much later. When Einstein published his theory of Special Relativity, it did not contain any fact or formula that had not already existed previously in the works of Lorentz, Poincaré and many others. It was just a new and original point of view about which is the meaning of those known relationships (i.e. that it is the speed of light which is constant in all reference systems, while other quantities are variable, instead of making other choices about which quantities are constant and which are variable). His contribution is actually very similar with that of Copernicus, who also did not provide any new fact or relationship, but just a new choice about which position should be considered constant, Sun's or Earth's. Both changes were very small compared with the existing knowledge, but they were very important for enabling further progress. Every progress is really incremental and it adds very little over the existing body of knowledge, even if the addition is essential for any further progress and for improving the practical applications.

ffgjgf1 3y ago

> reward Masimo for their innovation Except there doesn’t seem to be particularly innovative about those patents. Masimo just excepts to be rewarded for filling them..

jojobas 3y ago
This seems to be an uninformed opinion. Masimo has been on the cutting edge of pulse-oximetry for decades, and figuring out how to make a low power wrist pulse-oximeter is non-trivial.
- ffgjgf1 3y ago
  Maybe. These patents seem pretty trivial though. > Masimo has been on the cutting edge of pulse-oximetry Maybe because they built an artificial patent moat around themselves and no other company can compete?
  - mrtree 3y ago
    “Making a wristband pulsioximeter is trivial” Sure sure.
    - ffgjgf1 3y ago
      Are you replying to the right comment? But no, that’s actually the hard part. Something Apple did manage to accomplish quite well though (just like many other smaller companies would be able to do if there were no trivial patents preventing them from doing that).
  - jojobas 3y ago
    Patents expire in 25 years. Either they innovate as hell or you can just verbatim reproduce their model from 25 years ago and compete, you can't have it both ways. Philips and Siemens, of all companies, decided to partner and license the technology, and Apple decided they can toss them around.
    - 3y ago