Apple Faces Potential Watch Import Ban After Federal Trade Ruling | Hacker News Reader

Apple Faces Potential Watch Import Ban After Federal Trade Ruling

wsj.com

60 pointsfortran7746 comments

Worth to note that is not just some obscure small company coming out of nowhere to capitalize from Apple. Masimo is a decades-old medical equipment company, with several developments and patents for non-invasive PPG.

Apple is obviously well-aware of their developments, and was in touch with them already in 2013, more than a year before the launch of the Apple Watch.

From the actual lawsuit filed by Masimo in 2020 [1]:

"In 2013, Apple contacted Masimo and asked to meet regarding a potential collaboration. Apple told Masimo that Apple would like to understand more about Masimo’s technology to potentially integrate that technology into Apple’s products. Apple and Masimo later entered into a confidentiality agreement, and Masimo’s management met with Apple. The meetings included confidential discussions of Masimo’s technology. After what seemed to Masimo to have been productive meetings, Apple quickly began trying to hire Masimo employees, including engineers and key management."

[1] https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/byvrlojrdve/...

It's called "brain rape" in Silicon Valley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlwwVuSUUfc

Just goes to show that every company needs its own TJ Miller

From the complaint description it sounds more like attempted Acqui-hiring.

After that meeting in 2013, Apple apparently hired away several key-members of Masimo with knowledge about their non-invasive biometric monitoring tech, including their "Chief Medical Officer and EVP for Medical Affairs", who already joined Apple in that same year...

> it sounds more like attempted Acqui-hiring.

Except for the missing “acqui” bit, maybe?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acqui-hiring

More like a "hostile acqui-hire" maybe? They attempted to acquire a specific tech of Masimo by hiring the key resources instead of acquiring the company (or parts of it).

I'd call it an "attempt" because in the end Apple needed the "acqui-hires" to build something that was left behind in Masimo and was already patented.

It's not acqui-hiring without the acquisition. This is just poaching, breaking confidentiality agreements, and patent infringement.

I went to Masimo's page, and it took me about 1 minute to realise that their logo actually looks like that - it's not a resizing proportions issue.

https://www.masimo.com/

Ugh, triggers quite some OCD in me. Like a "How to drive your designer friends crazy" meme

It sounds like they will be flush with cash after the settlement to have a UX designer expand the art box containing the logo in Word.

OMG, it's even worse than Dropbox, who absolutely ruined their website for me with the last redesign with an insanely ugly font that looks squished in all the wrong ways.

If you add a x scale of ~2.3 on the logo it's clear they just took the whole thing and scaled it down. Looks so much better.

Usually when making a narrow variant of font for a logotype, one would correct the stroke and redraw tittles etc., so it doesn't look like a non-uniformly scaled piece of text. This just looks like the font Peignot scaled to ~43% width.

> "Masimo has wrongly attempted to use the ITC to keep a potentially lifesaving product from millions of U.S. consumers while making way for their own watch that copies Apple," an Apple spokesperson said.

no idea whether apple owns the health related patents on apple watch. So, does this mean apple will give up rights on all of it's health related patents?

text taken from the reuter's article - https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-trade-tribunal-issues-...

dang: please update the link.

Apple certainly deserves a taste of what they do to others, but of course they won't.

Actually it's worse than that, this would be a legitimate, deserved hit, while what they do to all the refurbished/scavenged parts is not. Someone somewhere already paid Apple for those parts, and Apple no longer owns them, yet they can deploy the government to exert control over them, and the little guy can not do the same to defend against that.

Somebody will try to hire their developers and managers? In order to give them a taste of what they do to others you'd need an even bigger company.

Eh, just one that pays better. Like all big companies, I'm sure Apple exerts massive pressure on all salaries, because plenty of people do leave for better shores.

They used to do just that, just not in the way you imagined: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34227388

They used to do that in addition to the way I mentioned, lol.

(Tbh I wouldn't be surprised if they still did that, just in a smarter way.)

> The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) on Thursday issued an order that could bar Apple (AAPL.O) from importing its Apple Watches after finding the devices violate medical technology company Masimo's (MASI.O) patent rights.

...

> President Joe Biden's administration will have 60 days to decide whether to veto the import ban based on policy concerns before it goes into effect. Presidents have rarely vetoed bans in the past.

I wasn't aware that the president has the power to veto bans of products based on patent infringement. I don't see anything about it in the Wikipedia article for U.S. patent law[1] either. Anyone have any idea where this power comes from, and when it has been used in the past? I'm kind of surprised that this is a thing, and I'm curious about whether a veto is "permanent" or for a set length of time; I'd expect that this sort of thing couldn't be used to avoid enforcing a patent indefinitely, although maybe it just "expires" if another president decides not to continue "vetoing" it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_patent_law

I would presume that the President actually has implicit veto power over the decisions made by any regulatory department placed under the executive by Congress — which in this case includes the Patent Office (part of the Department of Commerce.) or, to put that a other way, the President’s ability to override any military order as Commander-in-Chief, generalizes to the civilian operations of the executive branch (as “CEO of the Executive”) as well.

It's not that simple. See for example the Administrative Procedures Act.

It appears to be a specific provision of Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 as modified by the Trade Act of 1974. Specifically, the U.S. Trade Representative can disapprove of the ruling for policy (read: political) reasons. [1] However since she works for the President, the President can order the U.S. Trade Representative to execute this function of her office.

[1] https://www.usitc.gov/press_room/us337.htm#:~:text=Under%20s....

This is from 2013. President Obama Vetoes ITC Ban On iPhone, iPads; Apple Happy, Samsung Not https://www.forbes.com/sites/connieguglielmo/2013/08/03/pres...

It’s specific to the law around this import ban procedure: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/19/1337

Good news for Masimo, and good thing that Apple doesn't hold the important patents in the field.

Well yeah, it’s better that patent trolls can hold on to them.

Apple at least is under some pressure to not abuse it’s dominant position in the market. And more importantly that patents in this case seem just idiotic and shouldn’t be valid in the first place.

As if Apple doesn't hold so many idiotic patents they enforce like a huge troll.

> under some pressure to not abuse it’s dominant position in the market

Apple has a precedent in monopolistic behavior that trolls don't provably have

Epic would have a word.

I love how who is and isn’t considered a “patent troll” depends almost entirely on what tech nerd consumers have to gain from that classification.

> And more importantly that patents in this case seem just idiotic and shouldn’t be valid in the first place.

Ah yeah?

Masimo claims violation of various patents for non-invasive blood data-collection via LEDs of specific wavelengths and photo-diodes in a specific geometry, patents to reduce power consumption of pulse oximeters as well as patents to detect when a pulse oximeter probe is misaligned on a patient.

They can demonstrate in the evolution of the Apple Watch how Apple launched their initial generation without such optimizations but found them to be necessary later-on, so it seems Masimo's patents are not that obvious.

In reaction, Apple countersues Masimo on the grounds of their DESIGN patent of the watch itself [1], among others based on design patents for a circular charging "puck" and the DESIGN of aligning LEDs, photodiodes and charging coil in a circular geometry. They basically claim that Masimo took unfair shortcuts in 2020 when designing a Smartwatch with a rectangular display, a geometric alignment of LEDs and photodiodes MASIMO ALREADY PATENTED and using a circular charging connector.

Ah. And Masimo already won TWICE with their claim as a judge upheld the ruling, so that's where we are now. A trillion dollar troll trying to frame himself as the victim.

[1] https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/zdvxdyorxvx/...

Masimo is an actual company building real products, not a patent troll.

Oh, I thought this was a patent troll case but it’s absolutely not. Masimo is an actually reputable company founded in 1989, but I never ever heard of it in Europe. This is good news for Apple though, means Apple will fix this by bleeding some minor capital for licensing

The patent system is utterly broken and we could probably do away with it entirely, which would probably be a massive win for absolutely everyone except patent trolls.

I was wondering which patent is at play here.

From this[0] (paywalled) I found RE47244[1] "alarm suspend system" before the paywall kicks in and mention of "Panel’s ruling leaves one sensor patent intact" Unclear if RE47244 is the one or another.

Wondering if they're also going after Garmin & al.

[0] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/second-masimo-pulse-oxi...

[1] https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa...

... Is Apple really getting sued over "having separate buttons for long snooze and short snooze"?

Every time I read about a multi-million dollar patent dispute, it always covers something like "Having two wireless speakers play the same song". Not the technical nitty-gritty on how to achieve a specific goal, just some really broad idea like "Show a warning if user queues a two-hour movie with just one hour of battery remaining"

Apple sued over slide to unlock.

Edit: and won 120M on just that count.

Same story, non-paywalled — https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-trade-tribunal-issues-...

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So you want free and you want them to not even try to get some (very limited) information about you and winning a user in exchange for high quality news? Explain why. And also then why we should pay for software, maybe?

your GP said "not paywalled"; I think your PP was pointing out that he encountered a paywall

They're not asking for payment

> They're not asking for payment

That statement bakes in an assumption your data has no value.

Others would argue you're paying with PII which has value.

The implicit assumption is then also that the work of those who give you the news is worthless, as you should pay absolutely zero to access it?

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