16 ms·

US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect

187 points by blueblueue 3y ago

jqpabc123 3y ago
Live by the patent, die by the patent. No sympathy deserved or earned.
- dylan604 3y ago
  agreed. the richest company on the planet with its massive army of lawyers are either incompetent and could not see they would be affected by an existing patent, or so egotistical that they felt they could bully their way around it. either way, that's not a good look for Apple in this.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    Presumably the patent litigator also knows all of those facts and may have been holding out for too much money (in Apple’s calculus) and the long-run game is better for Apple if they take some short-term pain now in exchange for being known as a difficult target. Apple will be fine without watch sales for a long time if needed.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      Assuming Apple is in a 2-year cycle with the watch like its other devices, what are the odds the offending part of the series 9 watch is also in the series 10 watch with not enough time to remove it before the 10 release. it would make the 10 necessary to be pushed back while they retool the product or continue negotiating for a licensing agreement
    - mthoms 3y ago
      According to the Massimo CEO, Apple has not made any offer whatsoever to resolve this.
      - sokoloff 3y ago
        That not incongruent with a strategy to wait out a patent holder and thereby be known as a difficult target. Apple’s under no obligation to offer a settlement.
        mthoms 3y ago
        >That not incongruent with a strategy to wait out a patent holder and thereby be known as a difficult target. For sure. But it does counter the suggestion you made that Massimo may have been "holding out" for more money. >Apple’s under no obligation to offer a settlement. Agreed. I never suggested otherwise.
        sokoloff 3y ago
        Ah. In my mind “holding out” does not require a settlement offer to be proposed by the counterparty. If you ask the price to buy my 2005 Honda CRV (license my patent) and I tell you $250K ($250M/yr), many would think I was holding out even if you (Apple) correctly roll your eyes and don’t engage.
        mthoms 3y ago
        > If you ask the price The point is… even that preliminary exchange of information never took place. Apple has not engaged whatsoever; There’s been no contact since the original meetings (2013 I think) where they discussed working together. Apple (allegedly) went dark very shortly after and started their own thing. There would have to be some serious mental gymnastics going on to suggest Massimo was “holding out”. To use your metaphor; If I’m selling my 1999 4Runner but no one ever approaches me to ask about details (ie price) it’d be very weird to suggest I was “holding out”.
      - Grazester 3y ago
        I don't know when this was said but wouldn't offering to resolve be acknowledgement that there was infringement on Apple's part? Maybe now there will be willing to negotiate something
    - cozzyd 3y ago
      Or they could remove the feature (I don't find the pulse ox particularly useful on my Garmin watch... When I go to high altitude I bring my cheapo pulse ox from Walgreens that is supposedly much more as accurate). Or find some other way to implement it (Garmin, at least, has implemented it differently).
- dang 3y ago
  OK, but please don't post generic flamewar comments to HN. This kind of thing leads to repetitive threads that have happened many times before, which is not the curious conversation we're trying for here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - jqpabc123 3y ago
    Ok. But I do feel compelled to respectfully suggest that the following discussion lacks much in the way of what I would call "flames".
    - dang 3y ago
      That could be. But we have to moderate by the general pattern, even though not every thread works out that way. It's basically about whether the expected value of a thread is flamewar or not.
AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
Karma: https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-gets-u-s-ban-on-htc-android-phones-sales-for-now/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-gets-u-s-ban-on-htc-andr...
- tremarley 3y ago
  HTC probably lost out on billions due to this
  - dralley 3y ago
    HTC practically ceased to exist as a consumer facing company in the West due to this. I don't know of any hardware they've produced recently outside of their partnership with Valve on VR, and they're not the face of that relationship.
    - hedora 3y ago
      That article says they spun a new firmware almost immediately. I hadn’t heard of that case (Apple patents using computers to process structured data), but I thought some other thing did a much better job of screwing HTC over.
    - dagmx 3y ago
      I feel like you’re exaggerating the impact of this single case on HTC’s long term viability . The article says they rectified the issue in software right away. HTC died off in the US for many other reasons, I severely doubt this was one of them given it could be software rectified. HTC continued to make many phones ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_HTC_devices?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_HTC_devices?wpro... ) after this before being bought by Google ( https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/20/16340108/google-htc-smartphone-team-acquisition-announced https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/20/16340108/google-htc-smart... ) What killed of HTC’s mobile division was the inability to compete in the market against Google, Samsung and Motorola. I’m sure this case hurt some but given how quickly it was fixed, the import ban was likely very short lived. Especially because they had new phones available almost immediately after.
high_derivative 3y ago
Apple loves to bully competitors and suppliers with both patents and app store. I doubt being on the other end of this will make them change their behaviour.
- durandal1 3y ago
  Outside of fights with huge corps like Qualcomm, do you have any examples of Apple going after small companies over to patent infringement?
  - harrygeez 3y ago
    Forget small companies. Apple is famously known for blocking import of 3rd party parts for repair, but refuses to sell such parts to independent repair shops before recently. https://www.vice.com/en/article/9kxzpy/apple-is-still-trying-to-sue-the-owner-of-an-independent-iphone-repair-shop-louis-rossmann-henrik-huseby https://www.vice.com/en/article/9kxzpy/apple-is-still-trying...
pushedx 3y ago
Do the $15 pulse oximiters that can be found on Amazon also infringe on these patents?
- adolph 3y ago
  That is a legal question that depends on how much revenue is generated by said companies.
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    Not really. $15 pulse oximeters on Amazon are coming straight out of China from fly by night companies in a country that doesn't particularly care about IP law, and even when they do make it amazingly hard for a foreign company with even the most absolute, solid, novel patents to fight against a Chinese company blatantly and openly infringing. Trying to frame this as a money grab from Masimo is overly defensive of Apple.
    - asadotzler 3y ago
      None of these pulse oximeters on Amazon from China are violating these worn device patents because those pulse oximeters don't use an array of emitters, and heavily process the reflected light results. Wearable pulse ox is an entirely different tech stack as finger clamp pulse ox.
      - wkat4242 3y ago
        Yeah finger clamps shine through the finger completely. They don't use reflected light. They are much more accurate for this reason but also more annoying to wear. I think the only daily-wearable one that works this way is the Oura ring. I'm surprised how well it still works on a watch though. I never tried Apple's implementation as I don't have an apple phone to pair it with, but my galaxy watch 6's SpO2 works pretty decently compared to a finger clamp one, considering it is much harder to do it on the wrist.
  - c0pium 3y ago
hedora 3y ago
Apple certainly isn’t a an innocent player here (they have shut down competitors with bogus patents), but that doesn’t mean the system isn’t completely broken. The import ban is due to them using a technology that was invented in 1935, then improved to more or less match what Apple shipped in 1970. Ironically, the inventor from 1970 opted not to patent it. The history section of this article has a good overview: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_oximetry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_oximetry On top of there obviously being prior work, the “court” that blocked imports is part of an expedited process, so even though the real court will definitely consider invalidating the patent (and will probably invalidate it) that hasn’t happened yet. There are good examples in this discussion of Apple using equally bogus patents to block imports, but I hope something (maybe this case) becomes a poster child for this sort of legal abuse, and leads to real reform.
- zamadatix 3y ago
  I generally agree when how bogus this kind of thing usually is is brought up but in this case I'm not sure I can agree what happened here was fair play tarnished by misguided law after reading the backstory these past few weeks. The rub between the two here isn't pulse ox was used at all it's a specific implementation of a certain part of several patents Marino claims Apple stole when they were working together then abandoned the relationship. This isn't something where Apple did something obvious in a vacuum and suddenly a troll came out of the woodwork. "Prior work" doesn't mean someone did light based pulse ox before it means the specific implementation which improves it was already known and in use at the time the patent was filed, which is not the case here.
  - Despegar 3y ago
    There was no partnership as far as I know. Masimo met with Apple's M&A team, they didn't do a deal, then Apple hired Masimo employees to do it themselves. This complaint of Apple meeting with some company and then stealing their technology is the narrative put forward by every company or VC that meets with Apple and doesn't result in an acquisition. As if it's impossible to know who to hire from LinkedIn, patents, knowledge of the field, etc.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
[dupe] More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38771436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38771436
Tiereven 3y ago
I wonder if it is time to re-think the way patents work in an age of highly integrated devices. In this case, it seems like Apple and Masimo could have worked together to deliver a stellar product that promoted both inventor rights and benefited the public. Instead, both companies are suffering, and the public loses access to a technology. Perhaps the public should buy the Masimo watch if they appreciate the specific advantages of the specific pulse oximetry technology at question here. While that may satisfy a small percentage of customers whose primary motive is that specific feature, the majority of people I know wouldn't consider that a valid option, since they like the integration with the "apple ecosystem", or similar reasons. Would it be possible to separate end products from component technology in a way that prevents this? Perhaps by tracking an accounting line for patents internally, then pushing for legislation which requires patent-cost -> end product cost transparency?
- yunohn 3y ago
  > seems like Apple and Masimo could have worked together That’s literally what Massimo wanted, before Apple bailed on the partnership and poached their employees instead…
  - junofan 3y ago
    Where are you getting this information? The consumer business is ultimately a threat to Masimo. Did they have any intention of commercializing these patents? Why did so many employees leave?
    - c0pium 3y ago
      Yes. By partnering with Apple. The employees left to go work at Apple. Which is fine, you can work wherever you want and companies are free to hire/poach whoever they want. The issue here is not that Apple hired them or that Apple didn’t go through with the deal. The issue is that Apple didn’t innovate but instead infringed on someone else’s IP. If you want to see an example of what Apple should have done, go check out the Garmin patents around pulseox. Edit: People like to dunk on Garmin for being slow to market, while ignoring the degree to which Garmin doesn’t just rip off patented ideas and instead actually innovates.
Animats 3y ago
There are other watches with this. Withings is FDA-approved. Garmin and Samsung have several models. There are non-Apple watches which will pair with iPhones. And there are Apple watches without a blood-oxygen sensor. No big deal.
- solardev 3y ago
  How did the other manufacturers get away with this? Did they actually license the patent, or are they the next victims to get shut down...?
  - Frost1x 3y ago
    I haven't dug into this in-depth but from what someone who had mentioned, I think it falls into a very specific approach they're using around an array of 4 sensors which is patented. I suspect other manufacturers use different approaches that isn't patented here. Again, this is secondary information so take it with a grain of salt.
jusonchan81 3y ago
Is there a chance Apple will pay Masimo for the technology and resume sales? I am curious why that didn’t happen. If this is an exec’s decision and this leads to bigger losses than paying Masimo, I wonder what would happen the people involved in the decisions.
- sircastor 3y ago
  There's a chance. This is likely Apple exhausting options before it settles into a licensing deal. First you try cease-and-desist, then appeals, then settlement, then import restriction negotiation, etc. Obviously Apple does not want to pay a fee per watch for the technology. They say they're going to try to fix it in software, Masimo says it's a hardware thing. Apparently this whole thing happened because Masimo started selling a watch and Apple brought a suit against it and the ruling didn't go their way.
  - edm0nd 3y ago
    It's also happening because after some failed negotiations Apple just straight up started poaching employee talent from Massimo.
    - jrockway 3y ago
      This is a good thing. It increases salaries for everyone. If Apple can make more money with your ideas than Massimo, why shouldn't they be allowed to pay you more?
      - jocaal 3y ago
        Masimo made investments into R&D. They payed salaries to researchers to create new products and got awarded a patent for that investment. If the employees knew they were onto something big, they should've started a company or negotiated higher salaries before the patent was filed. If you want the reward, you have to take the risk. Apple sits on heaps of cash and could have done the same.
      - 3y ago
AlbertCory 3y ago
What no one's mentioned here is: this is an International Trade Commission ruling, not a US court or PTO ruling. So Apple cannot import those watches. They could probably build them in the US (now there's a thought), and injunctions against domestic products are possible but very unusual. Usually there are damages, not injunctions.
- solardev 3y ago
  Can we still manufacture electronics here, even if we wanted to? I thought all the expertise and machinery was outsourced a long time ago?
  - jrockway 3y ago
    We can manufacture electronics here, though the exact details of the Apple Watch are probably not easy to accommodate. (The manufacturing engineers knew it would be built in China, so they chose parts and processes that are mature there. For example, if the requirement was for all the parts to be made in the US, then it would probably use an Intel chip, since those are made in the US. It probably wouldn't get 2 days of battery life if they used one of those, however.)
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      Actually, there's no need to be all US-only. It's only the finished article that can't be imported.
      - pclmulqdq 3y ago
        They may find a way around this - I believe it was only required to do two "manipulations" to have a US-created good. Some people were getting around tariffs that way. Of course, a US court in West Texas could issue the same injunction as the ITC.
        AlbertCory 3y ago
gnicholas 3y ago
In the meantime, retailers like Best Buy can sell units that have already been imported to the US, and Apple can still sell the SE. I wonder if Apple preemptively imported a ton of watches for resale, to give them some breathing room. I imagine the post-Christmas period is relatively slow, and they’ll likely refresh the watches in May. Would it be possible for them to stuff the resale channels with 3 months of inventory, and then just move to a new generation of watches at WWDC?
- riley_dog 3y ago
  Why May? They were just introduced in September.
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    I was thinking that was the soonest event at which they regularly announce new products. They probably weren’t intending to revamp for a year, but under the circumstances they’ll probably update sooner (or settle).
- 0xB31B1B 3y ago
  Outside of their own apple stores Apple is not managing or storing inventory for retail sale. A shipment for bestbuy or Amazon will almost always go straight from the origin to the retailer logistics hub in the US.
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    Agreed; the question is whether Apple encouraged retailers to take on large inventories on a preemptive basis. It's in the retailers' interests to load up so that they're not left dry for an extended period. The only possible bad outcome for them is if they load up but then Apple settles, and they're not able to move it fast enough. But Apple could offer to buy back excess in order to alleviate this concern. It would seem like Apple and the retailers would want to work together 'against' Masimo here, since they both make money by stuffing the channel. I don't know if there are any ITC rules against this type of behavior during the pendency of an injunction.
nimbius 3y ago
Every time I read about This I am gobsmacked by just how big a cavalier blunder this is for apple. Who on gods earth at Cupertino thought the pittance you could save from sherlocking would somehow be more than the revenue from a new iPhone in 2023? Now you've either got to pay the license or buy the damn company. And you STILL had to admit to wrongdoing in front of the ITC and the world. Any acquisition you seek from now on is going to be a pretty cold reception if anyone cares at all to entertain it. I wager masimo will license this technology out to every competitor apple has until cooks pushing daisies and then open source it out of spite...or at least thats what I'd do ;)
- kshacker 3y ago
  Or you can win the patent lawsuit and invalidate the patent !!
KingLancelot 3y ago
[dead]
hindsightbias 3y ago
The hubris here isn’t simply about patents, it’s about entering the medical devices field. Apple has rolled over a million patents probably. But the medical industry has lawyers as good as yours and bottomless pockets.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I've seen tons of articles/posts about this recently, but does anyone have any links to any good articles that describe the patent(s) in question, and what the arguments are about (a) whether this patent is truly novel (I've heard tons of "pulse oximetry is decades old" arguments, but nothing about the specifics of these patents) and (b) whether Apple is or isn't infringing on the specific details? I'm sure this kind of analysis must be out there, but I searched through a couple of posts and lots of comment threads and primarily saw a lot of conjecture but no actual references to what was really under debate.
- jjcm 3y ago
  I too would be curious. That said, it's worth noting here that Masimo[0] is an actual company that produces pulse oximetry devices, not a patent troll. [0] https://www.masimo.com/ https://www.masimo.com/
  - Sakos 3y ago
    Real companies are granted patents for trivial ideas all the time. Massimo not being a patent troll doesn't mean much.
- notatoad 3y ago
  here's the patents in question: - "Multiple wavelength sensor substrate" https://patents.google.com/patent/US7761127B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US7761127B2/en - "Physiological monitoring devices, systems, and methods" https://patents.google.com/patent/US10687745B1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10687745B1/en - "User-worn device for noninvasively measuring a physiological parameter of a user" https://patents.google.com/patent/US10945648B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10945648B2/en, https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en, https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912501B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912501B2/en
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  What you think you want is the "patent prosecution history." I say "think" because it's kinda "all hope abandon, ye who enter here." Go to uspto.gov and prepare to be perplexed. You can be sure the issues of novelty and non-obviousness were argued there. Does that mean they'll be clear to you? Heh. Pro tip: the history is in reverse chronological order. Any doc that's only one page, you can probably ignore. All the arguments are in multi-page PDF's.
dang 3y ago
Related: Apple appeals US ban on Apple Watch - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38773177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38773177 - Dec 2023 (83 comments) Apple is officially no longer selling the newest Apple Watch in America - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38771436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38771436 - Dec 2023 (108 comments) Apple to Halt Watch Sales as It Prepares to Comply with U.S. Import Ban - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38684156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38684156 - Dec 2023 (14 comments) Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38682631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38682631 - Dec 2023 (482 comments) Apple Watch violates patents held by Orange Co. tech company, ITC finds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38059668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38059668 - Oct 2023 (104 comments) Apple Faces Potential Watch Import Ban After Federal Trade Ruling - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38034964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38034964 - Oct 2023 (46 comments)
gumballindie 3y ago
I am worried, but not for apple. I am worried for those poor souls so fixated on apple’s products that they may not even try using a competing product. What will they do now? Where will they shop and consume? There will be no presents with the apple logo, nothing to post about on linkedin, nothing to be proud of, nothing to wear to show the world the product they love and crave. What if Tesla is next? Or openai? What if they will all he crushed by patent holders, or rent seekers. Truly there must be something we can do. Abolish patents maybe? Civil war? UBI? Musk and Tim save us. Or since this is due to “President Joe Biden’s administration refused” maybe Trump will provide relief. Remains to be seen whom the hungry, angry, frightened, masses of consumers will chose as their leader to free them from the burden of small businesses oppressing corporations with their vicious patents.
2k2k2k2k333 3y ago
[flagged]
m463 3y ago
I was wondering if there was going to be this huge influx of demand, like beanie babies or NFTs.
bhartzer 3y ago
I'm wearing a Series 9 right now. What are the chances that they have to 'turn off' or 'disable' the pulse oximetry function? I haven't heard that mentioned--or if it was I missed it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ramraj07 3y ago
  The real question is if you’ll miss that feature. It’s one of the most useless things they added to the watch just because they had nothing else they could. This and the wash your hands reminder lol.
  - kridsdale3 3y ago
    I paid for it and I use it. It informs the VO2MAX graph in my database. That is very important to me.

187 points by blueblueue 3y ago

jqpabc123 3y ago

Live by the patent, die by the patent. No sympathy deserved or earned.

dylan604 3y ago
agreed. the richest company on the planet with its massive army of lawyers are either incompetent and could not see they would be affected by an existing patent, or so egotistical that they felt they could bully their way around it. either way, that's not a good look for Apple in this.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  Presumably the patent litigator also knows all of those facts and may have been holding out for too much money (in Apple’s calculus) and the long-run game is better for Apple if they take some short-term pain now in exchange for being known as a difficult target. Apple will be fine without watch sales for a long time if needed.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Assuming Apple is in a 2-year cycle with the watch like its other devices, what are the odds the offending part of the series 9 watch is also in the series 10 watch with not enough time to remove it before the 10 release. it would make the 10 necessary to be pushed back while they retool the product or continue negotiating for a licensing agreement
  - mthoms 3y ago
    According to the Massimo CEO, Apple has not made any offer whatsoever to resolve this.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      That not incongruent with a strategy to wait out a patent holder and thereby be known as a difficult target. Apple’s under no obligation to offer a settlement.
      - mthoms 3y ago
        >That not incongruent with a strategy to wait out a patent holder and thereby be known as a difficult target. For sure. But it does counter the suggestion you made that Massimo may have been "holding out" for more money. >Apple’s under no obligation to offer a settlement. Agreed. I never suggested otherwise.
        sokoloff 3y ago
        Ah. In my mind “holding out” does not require a settlement offer to be proposed by the counterparty. If you ask the price to buy my 2005 Honda CRV (license my patent) and I tell you $250K ($250M/yr), many would think I was holding out even if you (Apple) correctly roll your eyes and don’t engage.
        mthoms 3y ago
        > If you ask the price The point is… even that preliminary exchange of information never took place. Apple has not engaged whatsoever; There’s been no contact since the original meetings (2013 I think) where they discussed working together. Apple (allegedly) went dark very shortly after and started their own thing. There would have to be some serious mental gymnastics going on to suggest Massimo was “holding out”. To use your metaphor; If I’m selling my 1999 4Runner but no one ever approaches me to ask about details (ie price) it’d be very weird to suggest I was “holding out”.
    - Grazester 3y ago
      I don't know when this was said but wouldn't offering to resolve be acknowledgement that there was infringement on Apple's part? Maybe now there will be willing to negotiate something
  - cozzyd 3y ago
    Or they could remove the feature (I don't find the pulse ox particularly useful on my Garmin watch... When I go to high altitude I bring my cheapo pulse ox from Walgreens that is supposedly much more as accurate). Or find some other way to implement it (Garmin, at least, has implemented it differently).
dang 3y ago
OK, but please don't post generic flamewar comments to HN. This kind of thing leads to repetitive threads that have happened many times before, which is not the curious conversation we're trying for here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jqpabc123 3y ago
  Ok. But I do feel compelled to respectfully suggest that the following discussion lacks much in the way of what I would call "flames".
  - dang 3y ago
    That could be. But we have to moderate by the general pattern, even though not every thread works out that way. It's basically about whether the expected value of a thread is flamewar or not.

AdmiralAsshat 3y ago

Karma: https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-gets-u-s-ban-on-htc-android-phones-sales-for-now/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-gets-u-s-ban-on-htc-andr...

tremarley 3y ago
HTC probably lost out on billions due to this
- dralley 3y ago
  HTC practically ceased to exist as a consumer facing company in the West due to this. I don't know of any hardware they've produced recently outside of their partnership with Valve on VR, and they're not the face of that relationship.
  - hedora 3y ago
    That article says they spun a new firmware almost immediately. I hadn’t heard of that case (Apple patents using computers to process structured data), but I thought some other thing did a much better job of screwing HTC over.
  - dagmx 3y ago
    I feel like you’re exaggerating the impact of this single case on HTC’s long term viability . The article says they rectified the issue in software right away. HTC died off in the US for many other reasons, I severely doubt this was one of them given it could be software rectified. HTC continued to make many phones ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_HTC_devices?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_HTC_devices?wpro... ) after this before being bought by Google ( https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/20/16340108/google-htc-smartphone-team-acquisition-announced https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/20/16340108/google-htc-smart... ) What killed of HTC’s mobile division was the inability to compete in the market against Google, Samsung and Motorola. I’m sure this case hurt some but given how quickly it was fixed, the import ban was likely very short lived. Especially because they had new phones available almost immediately after.

high_derivative 3y ago

Apple loves to bully competitors and suppliers with both patents and app store. I doubt being on the other end of this will make them change their behaviour.

durandal1 3y ago
Outside of fights with huge corps like Qualcomm, do you have any examples of Apple going after small companies over to patent infringement?
- harrygeez 3y ago
  Forget small companies. Apple is famously known for blocking import of 3rd party parts for repair, but refuses to sell such parts to independent repair shops before recently. https://www.vice.com/en/article/9kxzpy/apple-is-still-trying-to-sue-the-owner-of-an-independent-iphone-repair-shop-louis-rossmann-henrik-huseby https://www.vice.com/en/article/9kxzpy/apple-is-still-trying...

pushedx 3y ago

Do the $15 pulse oximiters that can be found on Amazon also infringe on these patents?

adolph 3y ago
That is a legal question that depends on how much revenue is generated by said companies.
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  Not really. $15 pulse oximeters on Amazon are coming straight out of China from fly by night companies in a country that doesn't particularly care about IP law, and even when they do make it amazingly hard for a foreign company with even the most absolute, solid, novel patents to fight against a Chinese company blatantly and openly infringing. Trying to frame this as a money grab from Masimo is overly defensive of Apple.
  - asadotzler 3y ago
    None of these pulse oximeters on Amazon from China are violating these worn device patents because those pulse oximeters don't use an array of emitters, and heavily process the reflected light results. Wearable pulse ox is an entirely different tech stack as finger clamp pulse ox.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      Yeah finger clamps shine through the finger completely. They don't use reflected light. They are much more accurate for this reason but also more annoying to wear. I think the only daily-wearable one that works this way is the Oura ring. I'm surprised how well it still works on a watch though. I never tried Apple's implementation as I don't have an apple phone to pair it with, but my galaxy watch 6's SpO2 works pretty decently compared to a finger clamp one, considering it is much harder to do it on the wrist.
- c0pium 3y ago

hedora 3y ago

Apple certainly isn’t a an innocent player here (they have shut down competitors with bogus patents), but that doesn’t mean the system isn’t completely broken. The import ban is due to them using a technology that was invented in 1935, then improved to more or less match what Apple shipped in 1970. Ironically, the inventor from 1970 opted not to patent it. The history section of this article has a good overview: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_oximetry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_oximetry On top of there obviously being prior work, the “court” that blocked imports is part of an expedited process, so even though the real court will definitely consider invalidating the patent (and will probably invalidate it) that hasn’t happened yet. There are good examples in this discussion of Apple using equally bogus patents to block imports, but I hope something (maybe this case) becomes a poster child for this sort of legal abuse, and leads to real reform.

zamadatix 3y ago
I generally agree when how bogus this kind of thing usually is is brought up but in this case I'm not sure I can agree what happened here was fair play tarnished by misguided law after reading the backstory these past few weeks. The rub between the two here isn't pulse ox was used at all it's a specific implementation of a certain part of several patents Marino claims Apple stole when they were working together then abandoned the relationship. This isn't something where Apple did something obvious in a vacuum and suddenly a troll came out of the woodwork. "Prior work" doesn't mean someone did light based pulse ox before it means the specific implementation which improves it was already known and in use at the time the patent was filed, which is not the case here.
- Despegar 3y ago
  There was no partnership as far as I know. Masimo met with Apple's M&A team, they didn't do a deal, then Apple hired Masimo employees to do it themselves. This complaint of Apple meeting with some company and then stealing their technology is the narrative put forward by every company or VC that meets with Apple and doesn't result in an acquisition. As if it's impossible to know who to hire from LinkedIn, patents, knowledge of the field, etc.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

[dupe] More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38771436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38771436

Tiereven 3y ago

I wonder if it is time to re-think the way patents work in an age of highly integrated devices. In this case, it seems like Apple and Masimo could have worked together to deliver a stellar product that promoted both inventor rights and benefited the public. Instead, both companies are suffering, and the public loses access to a technology. Perhaps the public should buy the Masimo watch if they appreciate the specific advantages of the specific pulse oximetry technology at question here. While that may satisfy a small percentage of customers whose primary motive is that specific feature, the majority of people I know wouldn't consider that a valid option, since they like the integration with the "apple ecosystem", or similar reasons. Would it be possible to separate end products from component technology in a way that prevents this? Perhaps by tracking an accounting line for patents internally, then pushing for legislation which requires patent-cost -> end product cost transparency?

yunohn 3y ago
> seems like Apple and Masimo could have worked together That’s literally what Massimo wanted, before Apple bailed on the partnership and poached their employees instead…
- junofan 3y ago
  Where are you getting this information? The consumer business is ultimately a threat to Masimo. Did they have any intention of commercializing these patents? Why did so many employees leave?
  - c0pium 3y ago
    Yes. By partnering with Apple. The employees left to go work at Apple. Which is fine, you can work wherever you want and companies are free to hire/poach whoever they want. The issue here is not that Apple hired them or that Apple didn’t go through with the deal. The issue is that Apple didn’t innovate but instead infringed on someone else’s IP. If you want to see an example of what Apple should have done, go check out the Garmin patents around pulseox. Edit: People like to dunk on Garmin for being slow to market, while ignoring the degree to which Garmin doesn’t just rip off patented ideas and instead actually innovates.

Animats 3y ago

There are other watches with this. Withings is FDA-approved. Garmin and Samsung have several models. There are non-Apple watches which will pair with iPhones. And there are Apple watches without a blood-oxygen sensor. No big deal.

solardev 3y ago
How did the other manufacturers get away with this? Did they actually license the patent, or are they the next victims to get shut down...?
- Frost1x 3y ago
  I haven't dug into this in-depth but from what someone who had mentioned, I think it falls into a very specific approach they're using around an array of 4 sensors which is patented. I suspect other manufacturers use different approaches that isn't patented here. Again, this is secondary information so take it with a grain of salt.

jusonchan81 3y ago

Is there a chance Apple will pay Masimo for the technology and resume sales? I am curious why that didn’t happen. If this is an exec’s decision and this leads to bigger losses than paying Masimo, I wonder what would happen the people involved in the decisions.

sircastor 3y ago
There's a chance. This is likely Apple exhausting options before it settles into a licensing deal. First you try cease-and-desist, then appeals, then settlement, then import restriction negotiation, etc. Obviously Apple does not want to pay a fee per watch for the technology. They say they're going to try to fix it in software, Masimo says it's a hardware thing. Apparently this whole thing happened because Masimo started selling a watch and Apple brought a suit against it and the ruling didn't go their way.
- edm0nd 3y ago
  It's also happening because after some failed negotiations Apple just straight up started poaching employee talent from Massimo.
  - jrockway 3y ago
    This is a good thing. It increases salaries for everyone. If Apple can make more money with your ideas than Massimo, why shouldn't they be allowed to pay you more?
    - jocaal 3y ago
      Masimo made investments into R&D. They payed salaries to researchers to create new products and got awarded a patent for that investment. If the employees knew they were onto something big, they should've started a company or negotiated higher salaries before the patent was filed. If you want the reward, you have to take the risk. Apple sits on heaps of cash and could have done the same.
    - 3y ago

AlbertCory 3y ago

What no one's mentioned here is: this is an International Trade Commission ruling, not a US court or PTO ruling. So Apple cannot import those watches. They could probably build them in the US (now there's a thought), and injunctions against domestic products are possible but very unusual. Usually there are damages, not injunctions.

solardev 3y ago
Can we still manufacture electronics here, even if we wanted to? I thought all the expertise and machinery was outsourced a long time ago?
- jrockway 3y ago
  We can manufacture electronics here, though the exact details of the Apple Watch are probably not easy to accommodate. (The manufacturing engineers knew it would be built in China, so they chose parts and processes that are mature there. For example, if the requirement was for all the parts to be made in the US, then it would probably use an Intel chip, since those are made in the US. It probably wouldn't get 2 days of battery life if they used one of those, however.)
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    Actually, there's no need to be all US-only. It's only the finished article that can't be imported.
    - pclmulqdq 3y ago
      They may find a way around this - I believe it was only required to do two "manipulations" to have a US-created good. Some people were getting around tariffs that way. Of course, a US court in West Texas could issue the same injunction as the ITC.
      - AlbertCory 3y ago

gnicholas 3y ago

In the meantime, retailers like Best Buy can sell units that have already been imported to the US, and Apple can still sell the SE. I wonder if Apple preemptively imported a ton of watches for resale, to give them some breathing room. I imagine the post-Christmas period is relatively slow, and they’ll likely refresh the watches in May. Would it be possible for them to stuff the resale channels with 3 months of inventory, and then just move to a new generation of watches at WWDC?

riley_dog 3y ago
Why May? They were just introduced in September.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  I was thinking that was the soonest event at which they regularly announce new products. They probably weren’t intending to revamp for a year, but under the circumstances they’ll probably update sooner (or settle).
0xB31B1B 3y ago
Outside of their own apple stores Apple is not managing or storing inventory for retail sale. A shipment for bestbuy or Amazon will almost always go straight from the origin to the retailer logistics hub in the US.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  Agreed; the question is whether Apple encouraged retailers to take on large inventories on a preemptive basis. It's in the retailers' interests to load up so that they're not left dry for an extended period. The only possible bad outcome for them is if they load up but then Apple settles, and they're not able to move it fast enough. But Apple could offer to buy back excess in order to alleviate this concern. It would seem like Apple and the retailers would want to work together 'against' Masimo here, since they both make money by stuffing the channel. I don't know if there are any ITC rules against this type of behavior during the pendency of an injunction.

nimbius 3y ago

Every time I read about This I am gobsmacked by just how big a cavalier blunder this is for apple. Who on gods earth at Cupertino thought the pittance you could save from sherlocking would somehow be more than the revenue from a new iPhone in 2023? Now you've either got to pay the license or buy the damn company. And you STILL had to admit to wrongdoing in front of the ITC and the world. Any acquisition you seek from now on is going to be a pretty cold reception if anyone cares at all to entertain it. I wager masimo will license this technology out to every competitor apple has until cooks pushing daisies and then open source it out of spite...or at least thats what I'd do ;)

kshacker 3y ago
Or you can win the patent lawsuit and invalidate the patent !!

KingLancelot 3y ago

[dead]

hindsightbias 3y ago

The hubris here isn’t simply about patents, it’s about entering the medical devices field. Apple has rolled over a million patents probably. But the medical industry has lawyers as good as yours and bottomless pockets.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

I've seen tons of articles/posts about this recently, but does anyone have any links to any good articles that describe the patent(s) in question, and what the arguments are about (a) whether this patent is truly novel (I've heard tons of "pulse oximetry is decades old" arguments, but nothing about the specifics of these patents) and (b) whether Apple is or isn't infringing on the specific details? I'm sure this kind of analysis must be out there, but I searched through a couple of posts and lots of comment threads and primarily saw a lot of conjecture but no actual references to what was really under debate.

jjcm 3y ago
I too would be curious. That said, it's worth noting here that Masimo[0] is an actual company that produces pulse oximetry devices, not a patent troll. [0] https://www.masimo.com/ https://www.masimo.com/
- Sakos 3y ago
  Real companies are granted patents for trivial ideas all the time. Massimo not being a patent troll doesn't mean much.
notatoad 3y ago
here's the patents in question: - "Multiple wavelength sensor substrate" https://patents.google.com/patent/US7761127B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US7761127B2/en - "Physiological monitoring devices, systems, and methods" https://patents.google.com/patent/US10687745B1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10687745B1/en - "User-worn device for noninvasively measuring a physiological parameter of a user" https://patents.google.com/patent/US10945648B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10945648B2/en, https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en, https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912501B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912501B2/en
AlbertCory 3y ago
What you think you want is the "patent prosecution history." I say "think" because it's kinda "all hope abandon, ye who enter here." Go to uspto.gov and prepare to be perplexed. You can be sure the issues of novelty and non-obviousness were argued there. Does that mean they'll be clear to you? Heh. Pro tip: the history is in reverse chronological order. Any doc that's only one page, you can probably ignore. All the arguments are in multi-page PDF's.

dang 3y ago

Related: Apple appeals US ban on Apple Watch - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38773177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38773177 - Dec 2023 (83 comments) Apple is officially no longer selling the newest Apple Watch in America - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38771436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38771436 - Dec 2023 (108 comments) Apple to Halt Watch Sales as It Prepares to Comply with U.S. Import Ban - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38684156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38684156 - Dec 2023 (14 comments) Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38682631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38682631 - Dec 2023 (482 comments) Apple Watch violates patents held by Orange Co. tech company, ITC finds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38059668 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38059668 - Oct 2023 (104 comments) Apple Faces Potential Watch Import Ban After Federal Trade Ruling - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38034964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38034964 - Oct 2023 (46 comments)

gumballindie 3y ago

I am worried, but not for apple. I am worried for those poor souls so fixated on apple’s products that they may not even try using a competing product. What will they do now? Where will they shop and consume? There will be no presents with the apple logo, nothing to post about on linkedin, nothing to be proud of, nothing to wear to show the world the product they love and crave. What if Tesla is next? Or openai? What if they will all he crushed by patent holders, or rent seekers. Truly there must be something we can do. Abolish patents maybe? Civil war? UBI? Musk and Tim save us. Or since this is due to “President Joe Biden’s administration refused” maybe Trump will provide relief. Remains to be seen whom the hungry, angry, frightened, masses of consumers will chose as their leader to free them from the burden of small businesses oppressing corporations with their vicious patents.

2k2k2k2k333 3y ago

[flagged]

m463 3y ago

I was wondering if there was going to be this huge influx of demand, like beanie babies or NFTs.

bhartzer 3y ago

I'm wearing a Series 9 right now. What are the chances that they have to 'turn off' or 'disable' the pulse oximetry function? I haven't heard that mentioned--or if it was I missed it.

deleted 3y ago
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ramraj07 3y ago
The real question is if you’ll miss that feature. It’s one of the most useless things they added to the watch just because they had nothing else they could. This and the wash your hands reminder lol.
- kridsdale3 3y ago
  I paid for it and I use it. It informs the VO2MAX graph in my database. That is very important to me.