[faeriechangling]

They want a stay so the courts have time to make a decision, but last I heard from Masimo's CEO they haven't even come to the table to make a deal outside of court.

Why should good faith be extended to these thieves who are acting entitled to this technology even now and show no remorse or contrition? If they worked with Masimo they could develop an accurate FDA approved health sensor, but they want to sell their customers a second rate product that they stole and shoddily copied on the cheap.

[tw04]

It shouldn’t. They’ve done this and similar multiple times now, got downvoted for pointing it out in another thread. Apple is not acting in good faith here. Some beancounter determined it would be cheaper to steal the tech than acquire the company so they decided to do the wrong thing for the wrong reason.

I’ve yet to hear anyone even attempt to defend their behavior with a cogent argument.

[gruez]

>I’ve yet to hear anyone even attempt to defend their behavior with a cogent argument.

"Apple thinks the patent is invalid" doesn't seem plausible to you? Masimo's lawsuit against Apple earlier this year was declared a mistrial, which doesn't rule out Apple as being innocent, but also suggests that the facts are not clearly favoring Masimo as you might think.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-judge-declares-mistrial-app...

[FireBeyond]

Actually, you are looking at the wrong part of this.

The mistrial had nothing to do with the patents in play here (which in fact the court had preliminarily ruled in favor of Masimo's assertion that Apple violated its patent rights).

This trial, that was a mistrial, was over Masimo's allegation of "theft of trade secrets", in that Apple had multiple meetings with Masimo over its technology and learning all about it, then hired the people running those meetings from Masimo to Apple. Masimo alleges that information was shared in furtherance of a licensing deal or agreement, but that as soon as Apple knew what/who it needed, it abandoned them, and since it has not attempted to enter into any discussion with Masimo since, that this was its plan all along, and it never entered those discussions in good faith.

The mistrial was a result of lack of unanimity that Masimo demonstrated the theft of trade secrets - there was no patent component to this trial.

[manquer]

There are established processes to invalidate a patent ?

It is more than 10 years since this started , patent office is slow but not that slow .

Apple may believe they didn’t infringe masimo’s tech and theirs is novel enough, I doubt they have made indication that they believe it is invalid.

[gruez]

>Apple may believe they didn’t infringe masimo’s tech and theirs is novel enough, I doubt they have made indication that they believe it is invalid.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/analyzing-itcs-i...

"Apple countered that it did not infringe the asserted claims of Masimo's patents and attempted to distinguish the technology underlying its pulse-oximetry technology. Apple also argued that Masimo's asserted patent claims were invalid as obvious over the prior art."

> There are established processes to invalidate a patent ?

Is there? IANAL, but I thought the standard procedure was to make your product and then wait for the patent holder to sue. That has the advantage that you get to bring your product to market faster, and don't have to wait years for the inevitable lawsuits to settle.

[FireBeyond]

(Bearing in mind there are multiple cases going on here...)

> "Apple countered that it did not infringe the asserted claims of Masimo's patents and attempted to distinguish the technology underlying its pulse-oximetry technology. Apple also argued that Masimo's asserted patent claims were invalid as obvious over the prior art."

It did. And then the court ruled that there was sufficient merit to Masimo's claims. Hence the court ruling, and action we are seeing today. Apple's appeal will / should have to show that the court erred in that decision, with more than "we reiterate our previous claims" (a la "we strenuously object" in *A Few Good Men).

[insaneirish]

> but they want to sell their customers a second rate product that they stole and shoddily copied on the cheap.

Yup. When I think of Apple's engineering and design prowess, the first two phrases that come to mind are definitely "second rate" and "shoddily copied".

[TheLoafOfBread]

Just have a look here, where MacBook repairmen is going through Apple mistakes

https://www.youtube.com/@rossmanngroup

[lancesells]

Curious as to what he recommends instead of a Macbook?

[cortb]

Previously Lenovo, I think currently framework.

[notwhereyouare]

have we seen the butterfly keyboard

[CharlesW]

You’re citing one of several exceptions that proves the rule.

[jemmyw]

From the scientific meaning of "proves", as in it tests the rule. In this case it tests the rule and finds the rule to be false.

[stingrae]

This is only the Masimo side of the story. Apple hasn't made a statement that I'm aware of.

I doubt Masimo has patents on the only possible ways to measure Blood oxygen.

[u32480932048]

I wonder if their patent is something like "This is a patent for measuring blood oxygen by using measurement tools and methods to determine the amount of oxygen in the blood", not unlike the 1990's "uses computers to store and transmit [health] information" patents.

[hinkley]

I worked for a medical company in ‘97 that had an SPO2 meter they thought was pretty special. That would surely be out of patent now. Wikipedia has the first example as 1935, and Minolta making the first commercial model in 1977.

Most of them have the sensor and emitter on opposing sides of an earlobe, or a finger. So maybe that’s the unique part?

[kemayo]

The patent I've seen referenced is this one: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en

It seems to be a combination of describing an arrangement of sensors, strapping those sensors onto someone, and having the strapped-thing be a touchscreen device with wireless comms.

As a layperson it does sound like one of those patents which we like to make fun of -- the "X but with a computer" ones that're conceptually incredibly obvious. That said, I don't know if the sensor arrangement they describe is actually a novel thing that wasn't already out-of-patent elsewhere.

[jquery]

Why should they come to the table and make a deal out of court? Apple is denying they are infringing the patent at all. Looking at the patent, it seems like one of those "X but with a computer" patents...

[odiroot]

I totally expect someone to rush and explain to us how Apple is on the side of customers here.

[callalex]

I will. Customers benefit from features. In this case the feature is using light to measure blood oxygen, which has been done for close to a century, and was invented before the company trolling Apple was even formed. Unfortunately our broken patent system issues this troll a patent for technology that already existed, but they claim it is novel because they are permanently affixing the device to a person and adding a touchscreen. None of that is inventing anything, and preventing others from doing it directly harms competition and end users.

[FireBeyond]

> Unfortunately our broken patent system issues this troll a patent

Masimo isn't exactly a patent troll. They've been around for decades making medical devices that are in almost every hospital. And as a healthcare provider, the devices they make are actually some of the nicer ones in that segment.

The problem with your argument is it presupposes that Apple is this helpless company just trying to make our lives better. It completely ignores that Apple had dozens of meetings with Masimo, feigning interest in a partnership or agreement, getting into the weeds of the technology, and as soon as it had learned enough, it bailed out of that agreement, hired the people involved and started making things.

I have no particular horse in the game (indeed I own an Apple Watch, though I am a paramedic - but not one who uses Masimo devices in my ambulance, but use them when getting a patient to hospital), but acting like Masimo is some PE-backed patent troll is very inaccurate. It has put devices on the market that have been absolutely genuine advances in the field of non-invasive monitoring.

[kcplate]

> It completely ignores that Apple had dozens of meetings with Masimo, feigning interest in a partnership or agreement, getting into the weeds of the technology, and as soon as it had learned enough, it bailed out of that agreement, hired the people involved and started making things.

If this happened as you described then Masimo’s leadership would be at fault for not adequately protecting its IP until a deal was on the table.