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US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect

arstechnica.com

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Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect

#161

Post by c0pium »

az226 wrote: post #139
c0pium wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically yes, but that’s a bit like saying rocket engine patents are about the vector of hot gasses. There are a lot of issues with creating one chip that both emits and receives light which are not present in a transmission model. In particular, if you look at the actual claims in the case, this is what many of the areas which were infringed upon deal with.

I think that has to be decided by jury/judge.

What do you think this article was about, if not a judge and jury deciding this issue?

Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect

#162

Post by harrygeez »

durandal1 wrote: post #82
high_derivative wrote: post #6

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.

Outside of fights with huge corps like Qualcomm, do you have any examples of Apple going after small companies over to patent infringement?

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...

Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect

#163

Post by Sakos »

jjcm wrote: post #100
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #89

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…

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/

Real companies are granted patents for trivial ideas all the time. Massimo not being a patent troll doesn't mean much.

Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect

#164

Post by jevoten »

AlbertCory wrote: post #51
jevoten wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how they should work. Unfortunately, concept patents get granted all the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/loading-screen-game-pa...

both of your examples are from the 90's. It's simply incorrect to say "concept patents get granted all the time." No, they don't. You patent an invention. The claims on it may be inappropriately broad, but there have always been mechanisms to address that.

Unless you have a source showing things have changed for the better, I don't see how the age of my examples is relevant. Especially since they may have been granted in the 90s, but expired only very recently.

Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect

#165

Post by FirmwareBurner »

peyton wrote: post #151
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That' not the complete story. Apple basically screwed Massimo in getting Massimo to spill their guts on their sensor tech promising them an licesing/partnership and instead of following through, they decided to cease any licensing deal and instead poach the team to build that tech inhouse instead of licensing it. It's known in SV as "brain fucking". A lot of big companies do this to small companies where they promise…

Where are you getting your information? Doesn’t pass the smell test. Apple does tons of licensing deals—how could you run a vertically integrated company like theirs otherwise? A quick Google search suggests the working environment at Masimo is quite poor, so it makes sense employees might leave.

Read it, don't smell it.

Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect

#166

Post by withinboredom »

c0pium wrote: post #108
withinboredom wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Is this it? "The scattered light through the tissue came back instead of through, so this is totally novel!" Like literally, we are arguing over the vector of the light?

Technically yes, but that’s a bit like saying rocket engine patents are about the vector of hot gasses. There are a lot of issues with creating one chip that both emits and receives light which are not present in a transmission model. In particular, if you look at the actual claims in the case, this is what many of the areas which were infringed upon deal with.

A rocket engine (in its entirety) is probably not something you'd patent, probably because of precisely this issue. A sensor that can detect light is also likely not patentable, even if how it does so is novel. That seems ridiculous to me; there needs to be a point at which a patent, no matter how novel, shouldn't be possible.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd love to be on that jury.

Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect

#167

Post by noirbot »

ajross wrote: post #158
noirbot wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not trickery, it's a question of what the law is. If you grab a random person off the street, even simple machines like gears and pulleys may not be obvious. On the other end, you risk running into the "it's an auction but on a computer " patents just because you happen to be the first person to bother paying to patent that you could do that with a computer. There's a difference between novel and niche in my min…

> Even if you were trying to avoid any issue with patent and totally build a unique product, you'd still want to start with people who know the problem space vs. re-training people. Sorry, that's ridiculous. If you were genuinely trying to avoid IP pollution, hiring employees from existing market leaders is the worst possible strategy. Again, people are twisting themselves around here. Apple got caught red handed her…

See, I feel like that's almost the exact opposite unless you assume Apple and its internal legal department is made up of the biggest idiots on the planet. If they were intending on just infringing this valid patent and trying to get away with it, then they've literally handed the world a paper trail that makes them look as bad as possible without a literal email being published in the newspaper from Tim Cook saying "Yea, just violate the patent".

With the history they have with Masimo, surely the more reasonable explanation is that they saw the tech, thought they could make something independently that was as good or better without infringing the patent, and hired off some of the Masimo folks to help with explicit instructions to try to avoid any overlap with their old patents?

Does Apple have some history of flagrantly violating patents I don't know about? If anything, other folks have pointed out that Apple specifically has done this to other people before, so they're keenly aware of the risks here. I just don't buy what seems to be the conventional wisdom of "haha big company is dumb as bricks". Risking getting a flagship product banned from sale seems deeply unlike Apple's business strategy in general, which makes everyone's assertions that this infringement was intentional, flagrant, and obvious to a layman seem like it must have some fault in it.

Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect

#168

Post by jqpabc123 »

dang wrote: post #62
jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

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

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

Ok.

But I do feel compelled to respectfully suggest that the following discussion lacks much in the way of what I would call "flames".

Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect

#169

Post by Illotus »

noirbot wrote: post #167
ajross wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if you were trying to avoid any issue with patent and totally build a unique product, you'd still want to start with people who know the problem space vs. re-training people. Sorry, that's ridiculous. If you were genuinely trying to avoid IP pollution, hiring employees from existing market leaders is the worst possible strategy. Again, people are twisting themselves around here. Apple got caught red handed her…

See, I feel like that's almost the exact opposite unless you assume Apple and its internal legal department is made up of the biggest idiots on the planet. If they were intending on just infringing this valid patent and trying to get away with it, then they've literally handed the world a paper trail that makes them look as bad as possible without a literal email being published in the newspaper from Tim Cook saying…

> See, I feel like that's almost the exact opposite unless you assume Apple and its internal legal department is made up of the biggest idiots on the planet. If they were intending on just infringing this valid patent and trying to get away with it, then they've literally handed the world a paper trail that makes them look as bad as possible without a literal email being published in the newspaper from Tim Cook saying "Yea, just violate the patent".

They don't really need to be idiots. They just need to trust that there is a reasonable chance that Masimo won't do anything about it and if they do, there is reasonable chance that Apple wins in court and if they don't there might be appeals and if not they might have come up with better non-infringing tech and if not then they can come to license agreement with Masimo. With that train of thought I think its pretty reasonable that Apple acted the way they acted.

Re: US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect

#170

Post by gorlilla »

orenlindsey wrote: post #102
AlbertCory wrote: post #57

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.

Apple can't build a factory to produce Apple Watches before the entire situation would be resolved. And if they could, it would be much more expensive to run compared to making it in Vietnam (where they make it now). It would just be a stopgap solution.

Doesn't FoxConn already have empty factories up north somewhere? [0]

[0]https://www.theverge.com/c/21507966/foxconn-empty-factories-...

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