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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

#41

Post by asadotzler »

orbital-decay wrote: post #26
hedora wrote: post #13

Apple 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…

Did they patent pulse oximetry, though? The referenced patent seems to be for their specific detector design and signal processing method. https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2

You are correct and OP is burying the actual crime. OP is correct, however, that this is Apple's SOP as well. They don't amass tens of thousands of patents for the joy.

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

#42

Post by solardev »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #36
hedora wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Clips work by observing transmission of light through the finger being absorbed by oxygen-carrying blood as opposed to the single chip wearable which depends on measuring reflected light. Different techniques, different patents.

Thanks for explaining this! I was wondering why "clip on" vs "wrist worn" would matter, and your comment cleared it up.

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

#43

Post by solardev »

imjustforyou wrote: post #19
1123581321 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? Congrat…

You think that's weird, try drawing three circles that vaguely look like a mouse and building a multibillion century-long empire off it.

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

#44

Post by ajross »

Despegar wrote: post #23
zamadatix wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There was no partnership as far as I know. Masimo met with Apple's M&A team, they didn't do a deal, then Apple hired Masimo employees to do it themselves. This complaint of Apple meeting with some company and then stealing their technology is the narrative put forward by every company or VC that meets with Apple and doesn't result in an acquisition. As if it's impossible to know who to hire from LinkedIn, patents, kn…

> As if it's impossible to know who to hire from LinkedIn, patents, knowledge of the field, etc.

That's misunderstanding the argument: it's not "They poached our employees and that isn't fair!", it's "Clearly our technology was legitimate and innovative, they had to poach our employees to duplicate it!"

It's an argument toward the standing of the patent(s?), not a complaint of unfair trade practices.

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

#45

Post by squarefoot »

dralley wrote: post #8
tremarley wrote: post #5

Earlier 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.

My first (and last) smartphone was a HTC Desire, and I wished HTC died before the day I would shell out over 500€ for that piece of smoking crap. It needed the mainboard to be swapped not one but two times under warranty before it could be used for more than 1 minute without rebooting (apparently a well known overheating problem) then, months after warranty expired, it suddenly died beyond any recover to became my most expensive paperweight. I know I'm just an unfortunate drop in the sea, still I don't miss their products at all.

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

#46

Post by asadotzler »

FireBeyond wrote: post #12
adolph wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Ap…

None of these pulse oximeters on Amazon from China are violating these worn device patents because those pulse oximeters don't use an array of emitters, and heavily process the reflected light results. Wearable pulse ox is an entirely different tech stack as finger clamp pulse ox.

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

#47

Post by c0pium »

adolph wrote: post #10
pushedx wrote: post #9

Do 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.

Or trifling matters like clips working on an entirely different principle (transmission vice reflection) than the method which remains patent encumbered.

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

#49

Post by yunohn »

Tiereven wrote: post #32

I wonder if it is time to re-think the way patents work in an age of highly integrated devices. In this case, it seems like Apple and Masimo could have worked together to deliver a stellar product that promoted both inventor rights and benefited the public. Instead, both companies are suffering, and the public loses access to a technology. Perhaps the public should buy the Masimo watch if they appreciate the specific…

> seems like Apple and Masimo could have worked together

That’s literally what Massimo wanted, before Apple bailed on the partnership and poached their employees instead…

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

#50

Post by sircastor »

jusonchan81 wrote: post #48

Is there a chance Apple will pay Masimo for the technology and resume sales? I am curious why that didn’t happen. If this is an exec’s decision and this leads to bigger losses than paying Masimo, I wonder what would happen the people involved in the decisions.

There's a chance. This is likely Apple exhausting options before it settles into a licensing deal. First you try cease-and-desist, then appeals, then settlement, then import restriction negotiation, etc. Obviously Apple does not want to pay a fee per watch for the technology. They say they're going to try to fix it in software, Masimo says it's a hardware thing.

Apparently this whole thing happened because Masimo started selling a watch and Apple brought a suit against it and the ruling didn't go their way.

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