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

9to5mac.com

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

#481

Post by rickdeckard »

pests wrote: post #459
rickdeckard wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. All of this is confirmed: - It's agreed by both sides that meetings took place in 2013 and subsequently a confidentiality agreement was made. - Within the same year Apple hired Masimo's Chief Medical Officer and EVP for Medical Affairs, along with additional staff. - They developed and integrated the IP of Masimo into a commercial product. - A judge ruled that Apple infringed patents of Masimo [1]. There'…

Besides the patent infringement, I see no issue with them hiring key employees and trying to recreate the technology. If Apple, or some other company, approached you to rebuild what you built at your current company, for a lot more money - are you really telling me you're going to say no and that's the moral thing to do? Why are you trying to protect a company, a fictional entity, over the employees that make it up?

> Besides the patent infringement (..)

You exclude the only topic in discussion here.

Noone is framing this as an issue of individual employees. It's an issue between two companies, and one of them has a very thin argument to claim that it didn't systematically extract the other one's IP without paying for it.

As mentioned elsewhere: This strategy surely works most of the time, especially on smaller companies unable to survive 10 (!!) years after their IP has been extracted to await justice. But this time it didn't work because the other company is successful in another industry and has patented the technology.

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

#482

Post by shiroiuma »

rickdeckard wrote: post #376
caslon wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it scummy? Hiring people to produce goods or services and compensating them based on the value of their knowledge and abilities is sort of the entire value pitch of capitalism, and it's unlikely anyone would have moved over to Apple if the compensation wasn't more worthwhile to them.

They attempted to acquire a specific tech of Masimo, but changed their approach to hiring key resources of it instead of partnering with the company (or acquiring (parts of) it). The aftermath is this lawsuit, which illustrates that Apple needed their hires to build something that was already existing in Masimo and would have been subject of that partnership. I'm sure this "brainrape" strategy often works flawlessly,…

I'm not sure why this is "scummy" though: if these employees really love their employer so much, why would they leave? And if they're leaving, they obviously didn't love their previous job that much. Why should employees be stuck in a particular company and not be allowed to leave? Or is it only wrong when employees leave for a larger company?

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

#483

Post by matthewdgreen »

theamk wrote: post #234
bdowling wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some parts of them seem to definitely be a prior art The standard is to consider ALL of the elements together in the specific configuration. If this were not the case, then any invention that incorporated any conventional element (e.g., a lever) would be invalid.

It cannot be that simple, can it? Otherwise changing a single element (say "concave surface" to "sine-shaped surface", or "strap" to "clamp") would invalidate the patent.

There are two separate matters considered in these cases. First there is the question of whether the patent claims are valid: this is determined by evaluating prior art, either by itself or in “combination” where you take some elements from different pieces of prior art and argue that a skilled artisan would have known to combine them. Apple appears to have challenged the patents in an IPR proceeding at the Patent Office, using combinations of prior art from earlier patents, which they largely prevailed in. However an appeals court reversed parts of that ruling on technical grounds related to the way the IPR board combined different references (and some claims seem to have survived it.) You can read an appeals court decision here [1]. Separate is the question of infringement: Masimo needed to show that Apple’s products infringe the claims of the patent. Apple could “design around” these claims by changing essential elements of their product, but that would only protect them going forward.

[1] https://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/22-1631.OPINION.9-...

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

#484

Post by dghughes »

caslon wrote: post #462
dghughes wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like meeting a friend's girlfriend and then asking her out later behind your back.

Companies aren't people, and it's embarrassing that society's first response to a corporate dispute is to anthropomorphize them.

It's a metaphor.

But living beings aka people do operate the company and make the decisions.

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

#485

Post by dghughes »

throwaway290 wrote: post #443
dghughes wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like meeting a friend's girlfriend and then asking her out later behind your back.

> It's like meeting a friend's girlfriend and then asking her out later behind your back. Trying to understand this sentence. 1. Who is asking who out behind whose back now? 2. I gather you think it's not her choice to go out or not if she wants to, since she is your property now?

Apple meets "you" Masimo (friend/acquaintance) and the employees ("girlfriend") then behind the back of the boyfriend asks out the girlfriend.

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

#487

Post by phatskat »

rickdeckard wrote: post #478
prepend wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s still not rape as no employees were forced to do anything against their will. Making large offers to attract employees isn’t even unethical or illegal, much less anyone near rape.

Brain Rape, Definition: Intellectual property robbery thinly disguised as acquisition talk. Usually committed by a big company on a startup. https://svdictionary.com/words/brain-rape

Maybe we can just not use a term for one of the most vulgar and violating human acts to talk about something that has a lot less gravity.

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

#488

Post by hedora »

jb1991 wrote: post #358
hedora wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also didn’t invent the rotation bit (or cosine, etc).

Are you saying there’s no grounds in a patent if it uses math, because no one can patent math? The patent isn’t even about math. It’s about user interface innovations.

I'm saying that other people had already invented, demoed, and published the user interface inventions (concretely, pinch zoom + rotate) before Apple even considered building a computer with a touch screen, and that, as a workaround, Apple's lawyers patented using high-school trigonometry to implement the prior work.

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

#489

Post by sonicanatidae »

rickdeckard wrote: post #424
prepend wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think “brainrape” is a good description as employees leave of their own choice. The corporation isn’t paramount, the individual is. Saying Apple “brainraped” Marino because Masimo didn’t want the employees to leave with their skills leaves out the very important part that employees wanted to leave. Companies should be able to hire away key talent because it helps the talent who get hired away. As well as the…

The point is not that employees left. The point is that Apple had Masimo describe their tech, the issues and methods they developed to solve them, and Apple walked away to rebuild Masimo's solution. They succeeded, but unfortunately for them the methods were already patented IP of Masimo, that company which explained this whole field to Apple in first place. The fact that Apple hired Masimo staff to do so is just the…

I firmly believe Apple just looked at this as a cost of doing business.

They would still be paying Masimo compensation and would continue for as long as the watches were sold.

This way, they write one check, and are done.

Is it a completely shitty way of doing business? Absolutely.

Does it happen every day? Also, absolutely.

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

#490

Post by caminante »

taeric wrote: post #457
caminante wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the post above is somewhat accurate, in that there is no guarantee that negotiations will end in a license. Why is that revelation "wild?" Imagine saying, > It’s so wild that [Bernie] is allowed to refuse to [allow Bob] to [rent Bernie's spare bedroom]. putting aside the fact that [Bob] doesn't even want to rent from [Bernie] as applied to the situation here with the watches! :-)

I think it is fair to argue against it, to a large extent. However, patents are techniques and methods to do something. This would almost be akin to a sport team getting exclusive use of a play because they registered their playbook first. Which, yes, sounds "wild." I, sadly, don't know all of the details in this case. But with patents, remember that you don't even have to show that "Bob" even knew of the existence o…

My point was simpler: negotiations don't have to end in agreement, let alone trying to get a patent license.

This discussion has devolved into abstract swipes at the patent law system with characterizations that don't even apply if you take the article at face value.

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