12 ms·
Software patents are a scourge.
by BallsInIt 1y ago
Software patents are a scourge.
- sneak 1y agoThe whole concept of software patents is a hack; as I understand it algorithms as a rule cannot be patented, so the system running the algorithm is patented instead. This seems to illustrate the absurdity of that workaround.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoI would be a bit more sympathetic if this was not about a trillion dollar company who poached some employees rather than engage in a licensing deal.
- spogbiper 1y ago25 employees including the CTO, and then bought a building nearby to Masimo's office for them to work in. At least according to the CEO of Masimo in public statements. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR1o8EoW-Eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR1o8EoW-Eg
- thebruce87m 1y agoSounds good for the employees, so go Apple?
- spogbiper 1y agoYes, very good for the employees. Apple even offered them 2x their salaries to leave Masimo.
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoYes "very good", until Apple decides to mass-layoff them, because now, owning the valuable core IP and having killed their primary competitor in the field, Apple can do whatever they want and get away with it because those employees have nowhere else to go in the area. 200+ IQ move </slow_clap>. How people on HN can support monopolization of markets and killing of competition is beyond me, since in the end it always bites them in the ass (see recent mass layoffs in the industry), yet this lesson seems to be quickly forgotten.
- johnfn 1y agoIs there evidence of Apple doing this in the past?
- FuriouslyAdrift 1y agoApple is infamous for driving other companies into bankruptcy to acquire their assets. For a single example, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_Technology
- jachee 1y agoThat’s not evidence of Apple doing mass layoffs, though.
- ggreer 1y agoHow is that an example of Apple driving a company into bankruptcy to acquire their assets? Judging from the Wikipedia article, it looks like Exponential Technologies made a good PowerPC CPU, but Motorola promised they'd be able to catch up, and it's safer to bet on a big company that you've been doing business with than to rely on a startup for a critical component. Licensed Mac clones were only available for two years (1995-1997), and discontinuing the program drove many other companies out of business, so it's hard to see how the change was a ploy to acquire a single company's assets. It seems more likely that Jobs discontinued licensing because it caused Apple to lose money. And it looks like much of the Exponential Technologies team continued under a different name, then was bought by Apple in 2010 for $121 million.[1] If there are other examples, can you provide one that is more recent and/or more blatant? 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/technology/28apple.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/technology/28apple.html
- FuriouslyAdrift 1y agoWhen they started, they were producing for multiple small customers. Apple was frustrated with Motorola and approached them but demanded they massively increase their production capacity (Apple's model for dominating a supplier... put them in debt and beholden to them for orders) and effectively dominated them as a customer... Then used them to negotiate a better price with Motorola, dumped their purchase contract for 'reasons' and bankrupted the company. Exponential sued.. and won $500 million... for breach contract but were destroyed by that point. Apple gobbled up their IP for around $20 mil later on.
- mrcwinn 1y ago(I couldn't reply down another level.) >How HN can support monopolization of markets and killing of [sic] competition is beyond me. That suggests HN is a monoculture of some sort of united front. It is not. Diversity of opinion is best for this community (and all communities). And, sorry, what competition was killed off here? I, as the consumer, was never considering Massimo for my blood oxygen measurement needs. I bought an Apple Watch and just want it to be as feature-full as possible. So does Apple.
- yifanl 1y agoWhy were you never considering them for your blood oxygen measurement needs?
- lovich 1y agoNot the OP but as someone in the same boat. I wasn’t going to buy a device just for blood monitoring. What they produced is valuable to me as a feature of a product but not as a product in of itself
- yifanl 1y agoSo we should allow apple to have monopoly power in every industry because otherwise it'd be annoying to buy separate devices.
- usefulcat 1y agoWhere did anyone claim that Apple ought to have a monopoly on blood oxygen measurement in a wearable electronic device, let alone "have monopoly power in every industry"?
- snitty 1y ago>monopoly on blood oxygen measurement in a wearable electronic device And I know this isn't your argument, but that's a VERY narrow market for the purposes of a US inquiry into monopolies. Like, the normal market definition fights are about whether you should be considering "premium smartphones" or "smartphones" as a whole. Or all of the grocery stores in a given region, and whether that should include convenience stores that also sell groceries. I'd be hard pressed to imagine a court really contemplating an argument that a company has a monopoly in a very small slice of a market. It would be like saying that Rolex has a monopoly in luxury sport watches with headquarters in Geneva.
- adrr 1y agoMasimo never paid well. $100k to $120k for a senior software engineer. 2x sounds good but probably brought them up to average bay area salaries.
- meindnoch 1y agoYikes. That's like the poverty line in Silicon Valley.
- itake 1y agowhy is 2x the right number for their current employees? how are the employees that left the company, but contributed to the patent/company being compensated with this deal?
- soperj 1y agolol from the company that colluded with multiple other companies to keep developer salaries down.
- krferriter 1y agoGood for everyone except whoever had money invested in Masimo
- scarface_74 1y agoSimilar to what HNers are so happy to say about restaurant owners who actually have to be profitable and can’t depend on the largess of investors, if Masimo can’t afford to pay market rates to developers, the company doesn’t deserve to exist.
- blizdiddy 1y agoThis, but unironically
- geodel 1y agoRight. Somehow people here are struggling on how to pin blame on Apple even when developers are better off with Apple's offer. It is a great outcome for anyone who is developer. If in their world view "best developer salary is not always the best thing" one could have better reasoning for supporting little guy Massimo getting crushed by Apple.
- FireBeyond 1y agoSo if Apple came to your company, promising licensing, collaboration and other things, when all along their intention was to "take" "your" employees, you'd be cool with that deception? The employees made out better - good for them. That's a lot easier to do when you have a market cap 400 times higher than that of the company you made all these promises to, and then left holding the bag.
- meindnoch 1y agoIf another company taking some of your employees will affect you company's bottom line, then you better pay those employees handsomely.
- nkrisc 1y agoI think the good is offset by Apple using its other hand to suppress wages for other employees by engaging in “no poaching” practices with other companies. Probably a net-negative.
- FireBeyond 1y agoGreat for the employees. But Apple submarined their way in offering partnership, licensing, collaboration, with near zero plans to do any of it. So good for the employees, but I wouldn't be applauding Apple for their outright deceptions here.
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y agoThey destroyed the founders company and stole their IP in the process though. Let’s not forget there’s actual victims in this story.
- adrr 1y agoWhat did they steal? CEO destroyed his own company when he bought a bunch of highend speaker brands. WTF is a medical device company doing buying consumer audio companies?
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y agoThat’s not for you to decide. It somebody is eating/smoking/drinking themselves to death, does that give you the right to murder them?
- adrr 1y agoI don't follow your argument. Are you saying eating or smoking to death is like a CEO making bad decisions that causes their company to struggle?
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y agoNo, it’s that murdering someone doing those things is wrong. Even if the company is clearly circling the drain that doesn’t give apple or anyone else the right to steal their staff and infringe on their ip.
- adrr 1y agoThere’s no such thing as stealing staff especially when you severely underpay you employees. $100k for sr devs. Pay them what they’re worth and they won’t leave.
- hsbauauvhabzb 1y ago
- StopDisinfo910 1y agoGiving a pass to trillion dollars companies for them to just come next to something they are interested in, poach employees, steal IP and not give a dim to actual innovators sure will be a great incentive towards companies doing more R&D.
- malcolmgreaves 1y agoThe innovators are the employers. The company doesn’t innovate. So if the employees got taken care of then the actual innovators made out well.
- mensetmanusman 1y agoInnovators require the ecosystem.
- jen20 1y agoThere is no such thing as “poaching” employees - just paying them a market rate.
- throwawayxcmz 1y agoIf you actively go out of your way to hire people from company X on a priority bases rather than skills (and no, trade secrets are not "skills"), then you're poaching and it is not same as paying market rate.
- haswell 1y agoI think it’s a bit disingenuous to frame this as a situation no different than “paying market rate”. Whether you like this or not, the practice of hiring employees specifically to work on the same thing elsewhere or to drain a company of its talent - is called poaching. It’s often legal, but can be controversial especially when it’s a behemoth raiding smaller shops. You seem to be offended by the word itself, but it’s just a useful descriptor to differentiate between different types of hiring scenarios. I’ve been poached before, and it worked out great for me.
- 1y ago
- GuB-42 1y agoHad Apple offered a good licensing deal to the company, it would have been good for the company too. Especially if said employees had stocks as part of their compensation package. But it was cheaper to Apple to just hire a few key people and screwing over everyone else. Good or bad depends on how Massimo compare to Apple. Which one of the two offers the most growth potential. If Apple just keep the employees long enough to steal the tech before laying the off, not building on it, then it is terrible for all but Apple shareholders. If Apple "saved" these employees from an exploitative company, providing the with growth potential and further development then it is a good thing.
- ls-a 1y agoIt's time for Cook to cook out really
- lan321 1y agoDoesn't sound like the bad part to me. If Masimo wanted to, they'd have offered them the same or more to keep them, but they didn't. I don't believe an employer has any right to expect other companies not to offer positions to their employees. Employees should not be kept in the dark on opportunities for better pay and conditions because you can't or don't want to fight that offer.
- realityking 1y agoAbsolutely. But if the new company pays them to just recreate the IP the developed in the previous company - now much faster because they‘ve done it before - that‘s an issue. And patents protect against that. That said, a patent whose primary claim seems to be (based on the workaround) _where_ the processing takes place (ant not _how_) seems like exactly the kinda thing that shouldn‘t be patentable.
- OkayPhysicist 1y agoIt's really easy to avoid your employees being "poached": treat them well, and pay them better.
- gibolt 1y agoI generally agree, but the company likely doesn't have those funds. Considering the largest player (Apple) stands to make way more from it than you and just works around your patent. Not arguing Apple shouldn't poach, just that your suggestion doesn't work.
- OkayPhysicist 1y agoThe company made a billion dollars in profit last year. I doubt Apple was willing to pay anywhere near that amount to hire an employee.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoThey did not earn $1B in profit in the last year. Or 5. https://companiesmarketcap.com/masimo/earnings/ https://companiesmarketcap.com/masimo/earnings/ https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MASI/masimo/net-income https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MASI/masimo/net-in...
- runako 1y agoCheck the ratio of SG&A to R&D spend at MASI. They have money, they just choose not to spend it on engineering.
- boringg 1y agoWow you must work for a company with incredibly deep pockets. No way can massimo compete on salary with apple. Only people in the game who can do that are google facebook apple chatgpt etc.
- scarface_74 1y ago
- scarface_74 1y agoI hate the word “poaching”. A company offered employees more money in exchange for their labor. I see no issue. Would you have preferred what happened in the Jobs era where 7 of the largest tech firms colluded not to hire from each other’s company?
- Teever 1y agoApple is able to do what they do now because of the shit they got away with in the Jobs era. Because they hobbled competitors and innovation then they're able to do it now. It's really hard to determine how detrimental their actions have been to the job market for software engineers. It is entirely possible that every software engineer is worse off because Apple severely distorted the market and prevented many competitors from growing to be competitors to Apple and what ever offer Apple made to these people pales to what they could be making if Jobs hadn't done what he did.
- JustExAWS 1y agoYou mean they hobbled poor little competitors like Google, Adobe, and the other tech companies that agreed to it? Apple was actually one of the smaller companies at the time. How is all Apple’s fault? And are you really saying that the iPhone wouldn’t have happened if Apple hadn’t gotten into these agreements? In your alternate universe would Nokia or Rim (who wasn’t involved in the agreement) still been relevant?
- Teever 1y agoNo, they hobbled the competitors that their staff could have formed if they had made more money to do so. That collusion between these big companies to deny their employees a wage driven by free markets allowed those companies to accrue wealth and prevent competition from forming. That's terrible for their employees, that's terrible for the consumer.
- scarface_74 1y agoHow did their collusion stop a new company from offering more money than the depressed wages that the collusion was causing? Alternatively, if hypothetically without the collusion do you think the upper wage pressure would I have materially affected those companies bottom lines to not create the products that made them profitable?
- 0x457 1y agoI don't how can you patent "read sensor, and process readings on device" I get if how it's actual sensor was patented, not "read and compute"
- nradov 1y agoHave you read the patent?
- 0x457 1y agoYes. Apple is working around that patent by moving computing to a different place. I don't think it's something that should be patentable.
- burnerthrow008 1y agoMy reading of the claims is that the novelty is having the processor integrated in the sensor protrusion. So processing the data elsewhere (particularly on a different device) would avoid infringement.
- QuinnyPig 1y agoAnd then let their product lose the feature for multiple years rather than settling for some amount of money that was absolutely trivial to them.
- MangoToupe 1y ago> I would be a bit more sympathetic if this was not about a trillion dollar company who poached some employees rather than engage in a licensing deal. Obviously the people who suffer are customers. There isn't a single instance where IP helps them.
- adrr 1y agoWhy would they license something that was invented 50+ years ago? No one else pays a license for it. Not even valid patent as the company couldn't prove it court it was a valid patent and the case ended up being hung jury with all but one jury that held out. Only reason they couldn't import it because Travesty is the ITC is allowed to block imports without going to court. Banning imports shouldn't be done by some government institution and should be handled by the court system.
- terminalshort 1y agoPoaching employees is a good thing and should always be allowed. Companies have the means to prevent this at any time. It's called contract employment. But if they insist on being able to fire me at any time, they can eat the downside of that too.
- burnerthrow008 1y agoWow. So you view corporate employees like serfs bound to the land, not allowed to seek better opportunities for themselves? That’s kind of… dark.
- wyldfire 1y agoThey were "poached" or the employees negotiated their value? "anti-poaching" is how big tech companies described their anti-competitive agreements [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
- jajuuka 1y agoThey were very clearly poached. They were chosen for their specific knowledge of a product Apple wanted to make and Apple (being one of the wealthiest companies in Silicon Valley and ever) was able to throw out whatever number to get what they wanted. They even put them in an office near their old job. This isn't a case of "they went looking for a better job". Have you done zero reading on this story?
- anonu 1y agoI dont think the patent in question is for software: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en
- Disposal8433 1y agoEvery workaround I've seen for the past 30 years feel like a "Shabbat elevator" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat_elevator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat_elevator) I'm not using the elevator because I'm not pushing the button because it's always moving. Edit: I've always hated patents too, don't get me wrong.
- johndhi 1y agoIsn't this hardware though? :-)
- cmiles74 1y agoIMHO, the problem is that if you are wealthy enough then you don't need to worry about patents. I also think these patents are, on the whole, not great. But here the one company legally got the patent and the another, richer company hired away their talent and paid them to find a workaround to avoid licensing. Smaller companies will continue to license the patent. Few tears will be shed for Massimo (or Qualcomm) but the next victim could be a much smaller company, maybe one that would be more of a competitor. I don't like the current patent regime but I do believe enforcement should apply to everyone, not just players who lack the money to rig the game.
- zik 1y agoIt's a patent on a physical process for measuring blood oxygen. It's not a software patent.