141–150 of 357 posts
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Software patents are a scourge.
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.
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> For anyone remotely healthy, 100% of the time your real value will be between 95% and 99%, and there is almost no diagnostic value to it. Sure, but if the value is less than 95, that does have diagnostic value (if it's accurate)
Sure, but unlike heart conditions where people often have no idea (about afib, or even abnormally high or low heart rates), people generally know when they have respiratory difficulties. Like the other comment noted something about family having pneumonia, and I cannot understand how the watch would have made their situation better. If someone in that state wasn't already seeking medical advice, it's hugely unlikely…
I've got enough mild asthma around me that we have a finger pulseox (or two cause we "lost" one and found it later) and I've started yelling at sick people to check it once in a while. Cause they don't usually think to, but sometimes it lingers and by the time they decide to go into an office, the numbers are pretty low.
Of course, we're not on the Apple bandwagon and stopped wearing watches once we got used to having pocket watches again.
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Masimo was worth ~$16B when this was going down. They are worth $8B today. This is roughly the size of American Airlines. Masimo is not the biggest company, but they are a large publicly-traded company. The company does $2B in revenue and spends close to $800 million annually in sales, general and admin. This is over 3x their R&D budget. (For reference, Apple's R&D spend is higher than its SG&A spend.) Per levels.fyi…
I disagree with your assertion that Masimo has the money to compete. Apple's upside to employing these folks to build the tech into the Apple Watch is FAR, FAR greater than Masimo's potential sales growth for existing pulse ox devices (or patent licenses). With Apple Watches being licensed as medical devices for ECG & pulse ox, this gives clinicians even more reason to leverage them with patients for convenient 24/7…
[1]. https://www.masimo.com/products/monitors/masimo-w1-medical-w...
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And as a hypothetical sought after employee, how is that my problem? If another company wants to roll a shit ton of money up to my doorstep, why shouldn’t I take it? Should I be treating my employer “like family” and care about “the mission”?
It's about the company anti-competitive behaviour. No one said anything about the employees.
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Is there evidence of Apple doing this in the past?
Apple is infamous for driving other companies into bankruptcy to acquire their assets. For a single example, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_Technology
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Yes, very good for the employees. Apple even offered them 2x their salaries to leave Masimo.
Yes "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 . How people on HN can support monopolization of markets and killing of competition is beyond me, since in the end it always bites them i…
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(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 b…
Why were you never considering them for your blood oxygen measurement needs?
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Crazy that this is a 'patent'. We did this experiment in high school 30 years ago.
almost as crazy as a patent for a rectangle with rounded corners
These fall into the classification of design patent which covers ornamental non-functional elements of a particular item. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent
Design patents also cover typefaces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti... -- note that typefaces cannot be copyrighted in the United States
Design patents differ from a utility patent which covers how something works.
Much like fusion that is continuously imminent though