Karma: https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-gets-u-s-ban-on-htc-andr...
This was back when steve jobs was suing anyone making rounded corner phones right? The apple watch patent seems like an actual thing.
US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect
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Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect
#12Do the $15 pulse oximiters that can be found on Amazon also infringe on these patents?
That is a legal question that depends on how much revenue is generated by said companies.
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.
Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect
#13Apple 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
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.
Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect
#14Do the $15 pulse oximiters that can be found on Amazon also infringe on these patents?
They do not. Massimo's relevant patents have to do with their signal processing on user-worn devices. Cheap oximeters are clip-ons that only do rudimentary processing with strong beams of light through the fingers.
https://www.masimo.com/technology/co-oximetry/set/
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en (this is one that was cited by the trade commission.)
Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
HTC probably lost out on billions due to this
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.
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.
Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect
#16Apple 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: http…
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.
Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect
#17Do the $15 pulse oximiters that can be found on Amazon also infringe on these patents?
Here is the ruling against Apple: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/USITC...
The relevant patent claims are identified:
> the Commission finds that Apple has violated section 337 as to claims 22 and 28 of the ’502 patent and claims 12, 24, and 30 of the ’648 patent.
(Many more claims were included in the complaint, but Apple didn't lose on those claims.)
These are the '502 and '648 patents:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en
> 22. The user-worn device of claim 21, wherein the plurality of emitters comprise at least four emitters, and wherein each of the plurality of emitters comprises a respective set of at least three LEDs.
> 28. [This is one of the base descriptions; too long to pull as a quote.]
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10945648B2/en
> 12. The user-worn device of claim 8, wherein the physiological parameter comprises oxygen or oxygen saturation.
> 24. The user-worn device of claim 20, wherein the protrusion comprises opaque material configured to substantially prevent light piping.
> 30. The user-worn device of claim 20, wherein the protrusion further comprises one or more chamfered edges.
The easiest way to avoid this set of patents appears to be to use less than three LEDs. I assume that will produce a more unreliable reading, but increasing the number of LEDs does not appear to be considered an "obvious" approach to that problem.
Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect
#18Do the $15 pulse oximiters that can be found on Amazon also infringe on these patents?
They do not. Massimo's relevant patents have to do with their signal processing on user-worn devices. Cheap oximeters are clip-ons that only do rudimentary processing with strong beams of light through the fingers. https://www.masimo.com/technology/co-oximetry/set/ https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en (this is one that was cited by the trade commission.)
The independent claims in that patent seem to exactly describe technologies from the 1970’s, except that the detector is flat and uses 4 LEDs. The Massimo page you cite claims they invented their signal processing technique in 1989, and Wikipedia says they shipped it in 1995.
The patent you cite was filed in 2009, and is set to expire in 2028. Patents only are supposed to last 17 years in the US, not 39 years.
Anyway, the clip on one’s probably don’t use the algorithms from 1989 or and whatever is in the patent, since the innovation was using a flat detector instead of a clip. Clips were working fine for 20 years before SET.
Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect
#19Do the $15 pulse oximiters that can be found on Amazon also infringe on these patents?
They do not. Massimo's relevant patents have to do with their signal processing on user-worn devices. Cheap oximeters are clip-ons that only do rudimentary processing with strong beams of light through the fingers. https://www.masimo.com/technology/co-oximetry/set/ https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en (this is one that was cited by the trade commission.)
Patent laws really are so strange. Two people had an idea in 1989 (over a decade before I was born) and as a result, I am not allowed to build a product using that idea and sell it, even if I independently reached the idea myself. I think in an ideal world, we would have intellectual rights and patents, but for a vastly reduced scope of time.
You come up with an amazing breakthrough that will alter the world? Congratulations, it's yours for 10 years to do what you want. After that, it's fair game. Innovate or die.
Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect
#20Do the $15 pulse oximiters that can be found on Amazon also infringe on these patents?
They do not. Massimo's relevant patents have to do with their signal processing on user-worn devices. Cheap oximeters are clip-ons that only do rudimentary processing with strong beams of light through the fingers. https://www.masimo.com/technology/co-oximetry/set/ https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en (this is one that was cited by the trade commission.)
But the amount of processing necessary to trigger the patent is "any amount more than zero". Here's what claim 19, which Apple was adjudged to have indirectly violated, says about processing:
> [the user-worn device comprising, among other things: ] one or more processors configured to receive one or more signals from at least one of the four photodiodes and output measurements responsive to the one or more signals, the measurements indicative of the oxygen saturation of the user.
So if your device includes one or more processors, and those processors aren't just decorative, you're in violation. What processing you do is not relevant; what's patented is that you do any processing of any kind.
Note that Apple's violation does not seem to have been related to data processing; they were adjudged to have directly violated claim 22, which is the device described in claim 19 plus a series of modifications and/or clarifications, of which the modification/clarification unique to claim 22 has to do with the configuration of the LEDs in the device.
If the problem had to do with their data processing, they probably would have been found in violation of claim 19 instead...?