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by gruez 908 days ago
>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...

2 comments

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.

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.

>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.

(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).