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Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

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Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#101

Post by speedylight »

grecy wrote: post #94
ladberg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty nontrivial to buy a majority interest in any public company. It's not like you can just spend 1/2 the current market cap to acquire it, the price will shoot up drastically as soon as the market is aware of someone (especially Apple) trying to do it.

> the price will shoot up drastically as soon as the market is aware of someone Will that still happen if you put in a single order to buy 51% of all the shares at a price a little above the current market value ? That trade will be complete before the market "sees" you are trying to buy a ton.

That’s kind of what I had in mind, I don’t really know if it’s feasible or not but if I had billions of dollars deposited in my Robinhood account just made the order for that many shares, would it not go through?

Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#102

Post by epistasis »

varispeed wrote: post #95
eweise wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From NYTimes "In court, Masimo detailed how Apple poached its top executives and more than a dozen other employees before later releasing a watch with pulse oximeter capabilities — which measures the percentage of oxygen that red blood cells carry from the lungs to the body — that were patented by Masimo." Doesn't sound like they accidentally stepped on a vague patent to me.

> Apple poached its top executives What is this? Are they some form of slaves? If company doesn't want its employees "poached" they should pay them enough money so they don't think of "switching sides". This notion that corporations can own people and their brains should stop.

The notion is not that Masimo owned those executives or employees, the notion is that Apple needed the particular skills and expertise of those employees in order to build what they built.

Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#103

Post by Baader-Meinhof »

xyst wrote: post #68

IP/patent law is holding back innovation. Prove me wrong. You can’t invent anything or push something to market without stepping on at least 1 or more vague patents.

A lot of medicine requires $100's of millions of R&D, with a high chance of failure. No company would take that risk if their work wasn't protected. So at least in some fields, it spurs innovation.

Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#104

Post by ajross »

speedylight wrote: post #55

Since Masimo is a publicly traded company, can’t Apple just buy enough shares to have a controlling interest in the company and just force them to back out?

Others are answering this with more specifics, but there's a first principles answer here too: not without facing a shareholder lawsuit for the difference. The whole idea behind owning stock in the company is that the company acts to maximize the value of that stock on your behalf.

So if the ownership of the company (Apple Computer, in this case) takes a deliberate act that fails to honor the shareholder compact (taking a huge haircut on a patent license), then you sue them because they should have gotten you more.

Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#105

Post by purpleblue »

grecy wrote: post #94
ladberg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty nontrivial to buy a majority interest in any public company. It's not like you can just spend 1/2 the current market cap to acquire it, the price will shoot up drastically as soon as the market is aware of someone (especially Apple) trying to do it.

> the price will shoot up drastically as soon as the market is aware of someone Will that still happen if you put in a single order to buy 51% of all the shares at a price a little above the current market value ? That trade will be complete before the market "sees" you are trying to buy a ton.

This is 100% not how the stock market works. As soon as the volume increases, people will jump on the trade.

Also companies have an obligation to report once they have accumulated a certain percentage of a company.

Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#106

Post by ceejayoz »

skinkestek wrote: post #59
kstrauser wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, someone at Apple thought "we should add one of those pulse ox thingies like they've used in the doctor's office for the last 50 years into our next watch", saw that Masimo was a player in the space, met with them, and then decided they'd rather do it themselves. This is not something Masimo invented themselves. The class of devices existed for decades before Masimo even existed. I'm not saying that App…

I am not saying this is right. But I think it is something poetic about a company that sues and wins over Samsung for a "design patent" and uses the fact that Samsungs lawyers cannot see the difference as proof... when that company gets hit by a ridiculous "intellectual property" lawsuit. Said as an Apple user who has brought in a number of new Apple users, meaning I am not against Apple only against ridiculous "inte…

It's hard to look at pre-iPhone and post-iPhone smartphones and not see a pretty clear dividing line with significant shift in looks and functionality. I'm leery of design patents, but it's hard to say there wasn't some invention going on there.

We've had easy fingertip pulse oximetry since 1977, and Masimo was founded in 1989. It's unclear to me what in their patent is novel.

Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#107

Post by varispeed »

tw04 wrote: post #89
xyst wrote: post #68

IP/patent law is holding back innovation. Prove me wrong. You can’t invent anything or push something to market without stepping on at least 1 or more vague patents.

>IP/patent law is holding back innovation. Sure, but Apple has made an entire business out of making lowball offers to companies that produce tech they want. Then offering to pay more if they can just get more data on the tech, before ultimately pulling out of negotiations entirely and just copying that tech whether through internal resources, or hiring resources from the company in question. They've decided it's che…

This is wrong way to deal with this kind of thing. Apple should have not been allowed to grow this big in the first place so they could pull these kind of tricks. Otherwise you'll be playing whack-a-mole.

Correct way would be to force Apple to split into separate independent entities. This should apply to all other businesses too big to fail.

Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#108

Post by [deleted] »

tensor wrote: post #84
gunapologist99 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has the best engineers and can probably figure out a way

I suspect many people question the value of the patent system at all, so the size of any company doesn't come into it. The patent system was designed to stimulate innovation by allowing inventors to be open with their ideas without risk of "losing out on their idea." When it was conceived, it may have been a worthy system solving a real problem. But today, it's hard to argue that without the patent system we'd lose o…

[deleted]

Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#109

Post by SaintGhurka »

grecy wrote: post #94
ladberg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty nontrivial to buy a majority interest in any public company. It's not like you can just spend 1/2 the current market cap to acquire it, the price will shoot up drastically as soon as the market is aware of someone (especially Apple) trying to do it.

> the price will shoot up drastically as soon as the market is aware of someone Will that still happen if you put in a single order to buy 51% of all the shares at a price a little above the current market value ? That trade will be complete before the market "sees" you are trying to buy a ton.

That would only work if 51% of the shares had a sell order waiting.

Re: Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US this week

#110

Post by gnicholas »

modeless wrote: post #81
speedylight wrote: post #55

Since Masimo is a publicly traded company, can’t Apple just buy enough shares to have a controlling interest in the company and just force them to back out?

If they wanted to spend a bunch of money they could just license the patents. It would probably be cheaper than buying the whole company.

It might be cheaper to license the patents, but if they managed to buy a controlling interest in the company, they would also then stand to profit from Masimo's licensing arrangements with other companies. That is, they would be purchasing a revenue-generating asset. And after this lawsuit, I'm sure Masimo will have more revenue, as other smaller companies realize there is no way to win against them, since even Apple lost.
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