[HN Gopher] US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect
___________________________________________________________________
US ban on some Apple Watch sales now in effect
Author : blueblueue
Score : 133 points
Date : 2023-12-26 16:17 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Live by the patent, die by the patent.
|
| No sympathy deserved or earned.
| dylan604 wrote:
| agreed. the richest company on the planet with its massive army
| of lawyers are either incompetent and could not see they would
| be affected by an existing patent, or so egotistical that they
| felt they could bully their way around it. either way, that's
| not a good look for Apple in this.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Presumably the patent litigator also knows all of those facts
| and may have been holding out for too much money (in Apple's
| calculus) and the long-run game is better for Apple if they
| take some short-term pain now in exchange for being known as
| a difficult target.
|
| Apple will be fine without watch sales for a long time if
| needed.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Assuming Apple is in a 2-year cycle with the watch like its
| other devices, what are the odds the offending part of the
| series 9 watch is also in the series 10 watch with not
| enough time to remove it before the 10 release. it would
| make the 10 necessary to be pushed back while they retool
| the product or continue negotiating for a licensing
| agreement
| mthoms wrote:
| According to the Massimo CEO, Apple has not made any offer
| whatsoever to resolve this.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That not incongruent with a strategy to wait out a patent
| holder and thereby be known as a difficult target.
|
| Apple's under no obligation to offer a settlement.
| mthoms wrote:
| >That not incongruent with a strategy to wait out a
| patent holder and thereby be known as a difficult target.
|
| For sure. But it does counter the suggestion you made
| that Massimo may have been "holding out" for more money.
|
| >Apple's under no obligation to offer a settlement.
|
| Agreed. I never suggested otherwise.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Ah. In my mind "holding out" does not require a
| settlement offer to be proposed by the counterparty.
|
| If you ask the price to buy my 2005 Honda CRV (license my
| patent) and I tell you $250K ($250M/yr), many would think
| I was holding out even if you (Apple) correctly roll your
| eyes and don't engage.
| Grazester wrote:
| I don't know when this was said but wouldn't offering to
| resolve be acknowledgement that there was infringement on
| Apple's part? Maybe now there will be willing to
| negotiate something
| fsckboy wrote:
| no, you can have settlement discussions without affecting
| the case.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Or they could remove the feature (I don't find the pulse ox
| particularly useful on my Garmin watch... When I go to high
| altitude I bring my cheapo pulse ox from Walgreens that is
| supposedly much more as accurate). Or find some other way
| to implement it (Garmin, at least, has implemented it
| differently).
| dang wrote:
| OK, but please don't post generic flamewar comments to HN. This
| kind of thing leads to repetitive threads that have happened
| many times before, which is not the curious conversation we're
| trying for here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Karma:
|
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-gets-u-s-ban-on-htc-andr...
| tremarley wrote:
| HTC probably lost out on billions due to this
| dralley wrote:
| 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.
| hedora wrote:
| That article says they spun a new firmware almost
| immediately. I hadn't heard of that case (Apple patents
| using computers to process structured data), but I thought
| some other thing did a much better job of screwing HTC
| over.
| dagmx wrote:
| I feel like you're exaggerating the impact of this single
| case on HTC's long term viability .
|
| The article says they rectified the issue in software right
| away. HTC died off in the US for many other reasons, I
| severely doubt this was one of them given it could be
| software rectified.
|
| HTC continued to make many phones ( https://en.wikipedia.or
| g/wiki/Comparison_of_HTC_devices?wpro... ) after this
| before being bought by Google (
| https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/20/16340108/google-htc-
| smart... )
|
| What killed of HTC's mobile division was the inability to
| compete in the market against Google, Samsung and Motorola.
| I'm sure this case hurt some but given how quickly it was
| fixed, the import ban was likely very short lived.
| Especially because they had new phones available almost
| immediately after.
| squarefoot wrote:
| My first (and last) smartphone was a HTC Desire, and I
| wished HTC died before the day I would shell out over
| 500EUR 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.
| midtake wrote:
| HTC probably lost the phone game due to Samsung existing
| more than anything else.
| Racing0461 wrote:
| This was back when steve jobs was suing anyone making rounded
| corner phones right? The apple watch patent seems like an
| actual thing.
| stouset wrote:
| Design patents are an actual thing and they cover _extremely
| specific_ features of an object's physical design.
| skygazer wrote:
| Maybe? The two violated patent claims are "a protrusion
| comprising opaque material configured to substantially
| prevent light piping" and "one or more chamfered edges" of
| the protrusion, on a patent titled "User-worn device for
| noninvasively measuring a physiological parameter of a user."
| It doesn't appear anything that HN users would consider
| technology related was involved, and despite the palpable
| sense of Schadenfreude here, if it had happened to a company
| other than Apple, we'd probably be more sympathetic.
|
| The patent's claims seem likely to be further invalidated
| once it gets to court, but the timing unfolded to Apple's
| disadvantage. (Or maybe not, as they managed to hold
| everything off until after Christmas sales were completed,
| and maybe managed to get a bump out of the pending ban.)
|
| I generally feel no sympathy or outrage for Apples patent
| strife. They are often a target not so much because of their
| bad acts but because they're wealthy and a big potential
| payday, but they're also wealthy enough to defend their
| interests and the expenses are just the cost of doing
| business. (Although they are usually much better at
| preventing this level of chaos, but they pissed off a
| billionaire by hiring his top staff, so there's that.)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Patent _titles_ have no effect on anything. I have several
| with the exact same titles, and they 're all different.
| skygazer wrote:
| Yes, they're always vague. Maybe I should have omitted it
| so as not to confuse. To be clearer, the cited claims are
| the issue.
| srj wrote:
| The patent on clicking a phone number to dial it was
| particularly absurd.
| high_derivative wrote:
| Apple loves to bully competitors and suppliers with both patents
| and app store. I doubt being on the other end of this will make
| them change their behaviour.
| durandal1 wrote:
| Outside of fights with huge corps like Qualcomm, do you have
| any examples of Apple going after small companies over to
| patent infringement?
| pushedx wrote:
| Do the $15 pulse oximiters that can be found on Amazon also
| infringe on these patents?
| adolph wrote:
| That is a legal question that depends on how much revenue is
| generated by said companies.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| 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 Apple.
| asadotzler wrote:
| 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.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah finger clamps shine through the finger completely.
| They don't use reflected light.
|
| They are much more accurate for this reason but also more
| annoying to wear. I think the only daily-wearable one
| that works this way is the Oura ring.
|
| I'm surprised how well it still works on a watch though.
| I never tried Apple's implementation as I don't have an
| apple phone to pair it with, but my galaxy watch 6's SpO2
| works pretty decently compared to a finger clamp one,
| considering it is much harder to do it on the wrist.
| c0pium wrote:
| Or trifling matters like clips working on an entirely
| different principle (transmission vice reflection) than the
| method which remains patent encumbered.
| adolph wrote:
| Certainly it works on a different principle than that which
| is patented. At the same time, IANAL, and if the stakes are
| large enough the question might need an adjudicated answer.
| c0pium wrote:
| Adjudicated answers, also known as patents, have been
| separately issued for these very different techniques to
| accomplish the same underlying goal. The transmission
| patents are expired for quite sometime however, which is
| why devices using them can be made cheaply.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| 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.)
| hedora wrote:
| 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, the clip on one's probably don't use the algorithms
| from 1989 or and whatever is in the patent, since the
| innovation was using a flat detector instead of a clip. Clips
| were working fine for 20 years before SET.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| 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.
| solardev wrote:
| Thanks for explaining this! I was wondering why "clip on"
| vs "wrist worn" would matter, and your comment cleared it
| up.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| "17 years from issuance" is ancient. It's been "20 years
| from filing date" for > 25 years now.
| imjustforyou wrote:
| 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? Congratulations, it's yours for 10 years to do what
| you want. After that, it's fair game. Innovate or die.
| Moto7451 wrote:
| > You come up with an amazing breakthrough that will alter
| the world? Congratulations, it's yours for 10 years to do
| what you want. After that, it's fair game. Innovate or die.
|
| That's how patents work in the US. You get 10 years with
| the ability to extend 10 more. There are games to be played
| with some patents that extend their life (like a new use
| patent in pharma) but generally these parents for seemingly
| old things are new ideas about an old thing.
|
| If you want a short fun read on Solar Panels [0] you'll
| find a Melvin Severy referenced. That's my ancestor. We
| don't see a penny from his work because that patent is long
| gone and is just referenced as prior art. Feel free to use
| it all you'd like.
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/sponsored/brief-history-
| solar...
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| The international TRIPs agreement, managed by WTO,
| specifies a 20y term. AFAIK, 20y is standard for patents.
| Which means an invention (not an idea!) patented in 1989
| should be free to use from 2009 onwards.
|
| USA used to have 'submarine patents' that could appear
| later, but apart from that there doesn't seem to be any
| jurisdiction in which a 33 year old patent would still be
| valid.
| nullindividual wrote:
| As soon as you encountered FDA regulations and requirements
| for a device like this, you'd be asking for far more than
| 10 years of patent protections.
|
| I'm no fan of patents, but medical devices/medications are
| extremely expensive [in the US] to develop.
| solardev wrote:
| You think that's weird, try drawing three circles that
| vaguely look like a mouse and building a multibillion
| century-long empire off it.
| midtake wrote:
| Your second paragraph is how patents already work, and you
| can't patent an idea, only specific inventions. Sometimes
| patents for ideas slip through the cracks and sometimes
| patents get extended without a good reason, but these are
| not problems with the idea of a patent itself.
|
| What you're arguing against is corruption, not patents.
| Geisterde wrote:
| I would argue intellectual property laws are bad at the
| outset, and that the concept of intellectual property is
| praxeologically unsound. What right does a person have to
| restrict the progress and free will of another (or society
| for that matter) simply because they came up with an idea
| "first"?
|
| The very idea of intellectual property though, you own your
| mind, you own your thoughts, sure. You can own a document
| with the details of your idea, and you can physically
| restrict others from seeing your property. What does it
| mean for an idea to be property though? Why are government
| resources invested in protecting something that private
| companies and individuals have the responsibility of
| protecting themselves?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| But the amount of processing necessary to trigger the patent
| is "any amount more than zero". Here's what claim 19, which
| Apple was adjudged to have indirectly violated, says about
| processing:
|
| > [the user-worn device comprising, among other things: ] one
| or more processors configured to receive one or more signals
| from at least one of the four photodiodes and output
| measurements responsive to the one or more signals, the
| measurements indicative of the oxygen saturation of the user.
|
| So if your device includes _one or more_ processors, and
| those processors aren 't just decorative, you're in
| violation. _What processing you do_ is not relevant; what 's
| patented is that you do any processing of any kind.
|
| Note that _Apple 's_ violation does not seem to have been
| related to data processing; they were adjudged to have
| _directly_ violated claim 22, which is the device described
| in claim 19 plus a series of modifications and /or
| clarifications, of which the modification/clarification
| unique to claim 22 has to do with the configuration of the
| LEDs in the device.
|
| If the problem had to do with their data processing, they
| probably would have been found in violation of claim 19
| instead...?
| stefan_ wrote:
| It's funny how these things work. They don't even specify
| the wavelength of the LEDs used, instead preferring to
| patent any wavelength imaginable. But obviously not all of
| them will work. Why was this allowed in a patent? How is
| this a valid description of what they built?
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Why wouldn't it be allowed in a patent? As far as I know,
| there isn't a law that says patents have to specify the
| wavelengths used.
|
| If you built it with wavelengths that worked, it'd be
| covered by the patent. If you built it with wavelengths
| that didn't work, it'd probably be useless.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Here is the ruling against Apple:
| https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/USITC...
|
| The relevant patent claims are identified:
|
| > the Commission finds that Apple has violated section 337 as
| to claims 22 and 28 of the '502 patent and claims 12, 24, and
| 30 of the '648 patent.
|
| (Many more claims were included in the complaint, but Apple
| didn't lose on those claims.)
|
| These are the '502 and '648 patents:
|
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en
|
| > 22. The user-worn device of claim 21, wherein the plurality
| of emitters comprise at least four emitters, and wherein each
| of the plurality of emitters comprises a respective set of at
| least three LEDs.
|
| > 28. [This is one of the base descriptions; too long to pull
| as a quote.]
|
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US10945648B2/en
|
| > 12. The user-worn device of claim 8, wherein the
| physiological parameter comprises oxygen or oxygen saturation.
|
| > 24. The user-worn device of claim 20, wherein the protrusion
| comprises opaque material configured to substantially prevent
| light piping.
|
| > 30. The user-worn device of claim 20, wherein the protrusion
| further comprises one or more chamfered edges.
|
| The easiest way to avoid this set of patents appears to be to
| use less than three LEDs. I assume that will produce a more
| unreliable reading, but increasing the number of LEDs does not
| appear to be considered an "obvious" approach to that problem.
| hedora wrote:
| 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: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_oximetry
|
| On top of there obviously being prior work, the "court" that
| blocked imports is part of an expedited process, so even though
| the real court will definitely consider invalidating the patent
| (and will probably invalidate it) that hasn't happened yet.
|
| There are good examples in this discussion of Apple using equally
| bogus patents to block imports, but I hope something (maybe this
| case) becomes a poster child for this sort of legal abuse, and
| leads to real reform.
| zamadatix wrote:
| 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
| abandoned the relationship. This isn't something where Apple
| did something obvious in a vacuum and suddenly a troll came out
| of the woodwork. "Prior work" doesn't mean someone did light
| based pulse ox before it means the specific implementation
| which improves it was already known and in use at the time the
| patent was filed, which is not the case here.
| Despegar wrote:
| 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, knowledge of the field, etc.
| ajross wrote:
| > 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.
| jhugo wrote:
| > 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!"
|
| This seems a pretty thin argument. Hiring some people who
| already successfully did it has a higher chance of
| success than hiring randos, even if they have to do a
| clean-room re-implementation. So of course you're going
| to hire them if you can.
| ajross wrote:
| > This seems a pretty thin argument. Hiring some people
| who already successfully did it has a higher chance of
| success than hiring randos, even if they have to do a
| clean-room re-implementation.
|
| That's... literally the argument. If the patent was
| obvious to a practitioner in the field, you wouldn't need
| to hire experts. And not just any experts, experts from
| the company that holds the patent in question!
|
| Honestly this part of the argument seems pretty sound to
| me. Whether patents should have this kind of power on the
| whole is I think an excellent question. But given the
| system we have, as I see it Apple is screwed here.
| They're going to end up cutting a very big check to get
| out of this.
| noirbot wrote:
| Isn't the question what the "field" is? Does it have to
| be obvious to a random college grad in Electrical
| Engineering? Biomed Engineering? Someone who's worked in
| Medical devices before? Someone who's worked on any other
| Pulse/Ox before?
|
| I can very easily see a case where it's obvious to anyone
| who's worked on this sort of device before, but only 1-2
| companies make that sort of device, so if you want to
| hire someone to make that sort of device without starting
| from literally 0 experience, it would have to be from one
| of the few companies that have patents in that field.
|
| Once you're talking about specific methods of
| accomplishing a specific task in a field, there aren't
| _that_ many experts _or_ practitioners.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| > This seems a pretty thin argument. Hiring some people
| who already successfully did it has a higher chance of
| success than hiring randos
|
| You're basically agreeing to the GP's "thin" argument by
| saying you need people who already successfully did it to
| have a higher chance of succeeding.
|
| > even if they have to do a clean-room re-implementation
|
| You can't do a clean-room re-implementation if you're
| hiring people who already worked of the original
| implementation. Plus clean-room design only circumvents
| copyright claims. They don't defend against patents.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| 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
| c0pium wrote:
| That's how patents always work; the concept cannot be
| patented, it's the method which is. Garmin for instance has
| their own (patented) method which works differently from the
| infringing Apple implementation.
| jevoten wrote:
| That's how they _should_ work. Unfortunately, concept
| patents get granted all the time:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/loading-screen-game-
| pa...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| both of your examples are from the 90's.
|
| It's simply incorrect to say "concept patents get granted
| all the time." No, they don't. You patent an invention.
| The claims on it may be inappropriately broad, but there
| have always been mechanisms to address that.
| c0pium wrote:
| Clicking once and having a thing show up at your house is
| not a concept, it's a process. There are lots of ways to
| have a streamlined payment experience which do not
| violate this patent.
| asadotzler wrote:
| 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.
| c0pium wrote:
| Those dates are all incorrect (or at a minimum not applicable).
| As is stated in the cited Wikipedia article, those dates are
| for detecting pulseox via transmission of light through a thin
| part of the body, such as a finger or ear, as opposed to
| reflectance. Reflection pulse oximetry from a thick part of the
| body, such as a wrist, is a much more recent invention and is
| the subject of these patents.
| withinboredom wrote:
| This. Is this it? "The scattered light through the tissue
| came back instead of through, so this is totally novel!"
|
| Like literally, we are arguing over the vector of the light?
| c0pium wrote:
| Technically yes, but that's a bit like saying rocket engine
| patents are about the vector of hot gasses. There are a lot
| of issues with creating one chip that both emits and
| receives light which are not present in a transmission
| model. In particular, if you look at the actual claims in
| the case, this is what many of the areas which were
| infringed upon deal with.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Why do you think that a District Court will invalidate the
| parents? The ITC determined they were valid, and they're a
| competent specialized court that deals exclusively with this
| sort of case.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > they have shut down competitors with bogus patents
|
| this is an interesting point, but what are some examples?
| spogbiper wrote:
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-gets-u-s-ban-on-htc-
| andr...
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| wow; that's nuts. thanks for sharing it.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38771436
| Tiereven wrote:
| 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 advantages of the specific pulse oximetry technology
| at question here. While that may satisfy a small percentage of
| customers whose primary motive is that specific feature, the
| majority of people I know wouldn't consider that a valid option,
| since they like the integration with the "apple ecosystem", or
| similar reasons.
|
| Would it be possible to separate end products from component
| technology in a way that prevents this? Perhaps by tracking an
| accounting line for patents internally, then pushing for
| legislation which requires patent-cost -> end product cost
| transparency?
| yunohn wrote:
| > 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...
| peyton wrote:
| Where are you getting this information? The consumer business
| is ultimately a threat to Masimo. Did they have any intention
| of commercializing these patents? Why did so many employees
| leave?
| c0pium wrote:
| Yes. By partnering with Apple. The employees left to go
| work at Apple. Which is fine, you can work wherever you
| want and companies are free to hire/poach whoever they
| want.
|
| The issue here is not that Apple hired them or that Apple
| didn't go through with the deal. The issue is that Apple
| didn't innovate but instead infringed on someone else's IP.
| If you want to see an example of what Apple should have
| done, go check out the Garmin patents around pulseox.
|
| Edit: People like to dunk on Garmin for being slow to
| market, while ignoring the degree to which Garmin doesn't
| just rip off patented ideas and instead actually innovates.
| Tiereven wrote:
| Their existing product line is marketed on their patent
| background [^1]. The questions you're asking seem to
| resonate with a certain skepticism I have observed
| repeatedly in related situations. This is why I am
| wondering if anyone is seriously considering alternative
| models. It seems someone in this audience is likely to know
| of such a proposal if any exists.
|
| [^1]
| https://www.masimopersonalhealth.com/products/masimo-w1
| Tiereven wrote:
| That's the narrative I am gathering from the comments here.
| Is it possible to realign incentives to promote cooperation
| instead? I understand this kind of restructuring would
| generate huge turbulence and resistance from entrenched
| players - but if it's possible to use the patent system for
| collaboration instead of market exclusion, the resulting net
| benefit to inventors/researchers, manufacturing and the
| general public might be worth it.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| The banning of these Apple products _does_ promote
| cooperation. After all, it is actively punishing Apple's
| lack of cooperation.
| tensor wrote:
| Paying arbitrary fees to someone who filed paperwork
| first does not promote any sort of "cooperation", unless
| your idea of cooperation is one person paying money and
| one collecting it and giving nothing in return.
| jocaal wrote:
| > ...giving nothing in return
|
| Patent law is there, because creating original work is
| costly and can take years in engineering and scientific
| fields. The patents are there to give a time-window for
| the people who made the investments to make their money
| back and get some return on their investment.
| jessriedel wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I don't think the existence of rare costly outcomes is very
| good evidence that anything is wrong with the system.
|
| Among high-level players, the vast majority of poker hands ends
| with an "agreement" about who probably has the strongest hand
| (i.e, all but one player folds and there's a modest transfer of
| funds to that player). But in order for that system to work,
| there has to be a credible threat of a showdown which, from an
| economic perspective considering just that single hand, is
| inefficient.
|
| Likewise, the patent system might be good or bad overall, but
| occasional occurance of costly outcomes doesn't tell us much.
| Animats wrote:
| There are other watches with this. Withings is FDA-approved.
| Garmin and Samsung have several models. There are non-Apple
| watches which will pair with iPhones. And there are Apple watches
| without a blood-oxygen sensor. No big deal.
| solardev wrote:
| How did the other manufacturers get away with this? Did they
| actually license the patent, or are they the next victims to
| get shut down...?
| Frost1x wrote:
| I haven't dug into this in-depth but from what someone who
| had mentioned, I think it falls into a very specific approach
| they're using around an array of 4 sensors which is patented.
| I suspect other manufacturers use different approaches that
| isn't patented here. Again, this is secondary information so
| take it with a grain of salt.
| jusonchan81 wrote:
| 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.
| sircastor wrote:
| 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.
| edm0nd wrote:
| It's also happening because after some failed negotiations
| Apple just straight up started poaching employee talent from
| Massimo.
| jrockway wrote:
| This is a good thing. It increases salaries for everyone.
| If Apple can make more money with your ideas than Massimo,
| why shouldn't they be allowed to pay you more?
| jocaal wrote:
| Masimo made investments into R&D. They payed salaries to
| researchers to create new products and got awarded a
| patent for that investment. If the employees knew they
| were onto something big, they should've started a company
| or negotiated higher salaries before the patent was
| filed. If you want the reward, you have to take the risk.
|
| Apple sits on heaps of cash and could have done the same.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> It increases salaries for everyone._
|
| Not always and not for everyone. Follow me: Currently
| there are two players in this space competing for talent,
| Apple and Massimo. This competition results in higher
| wages and more innovation. What do you think will happen
| to wages and innovation if Apple just guts Massimo(or any
| other company) and now there's only one player on the
| market, Apple? Now Apple can pay you whatever they want
| because you have nowhere else to go.
|
| How do I know this? Because years and years ago, two
| major semiconductor companies had offices in my home
| town. And workers would get pay raises by jumping ship
| between the two. A few years ago, one of the bigger
| corps. bought the other smaller one becoming an even
| bigger behemoth, so the offices had to merge, leading to
| layoffs in the name of cutting the redundant jobs and
| "optimizing efficiency". What do you think happened to
| the wages at the new giant company? Did they go up or
| not?
|
| So, I question the thought process of HNers who support
| that Apple crushing a smaller player out of a market
| somehow leads to higher salaries for everyone. If you
| want higher salaries, you need more players in that
| market, not one giant monopolist. This isn't Apple vs
| some equal Goliath like Google or Microsoft who can
| afford to fight fire with fire.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| That' not the complete story. Apple basically screwed
| Massimo in getting Massimo to spill their guts on their
| sensor tech promising them an licesing/partnership and
| instead of following through, they decided to cease any
| licensing deal and instead poach the team to build that
| tech inhouse instead of licensing it.
|
| It's known in SV as "brain fucking". A lot of big companies
| do this to small companies where they promise a
| acquisition/licensing/funding deal in order to get
| presentations with confidential info on the core tech, and
| then just use their massive war chest to build that core
| tech themselves without compensating the smaller player for
| having reveal the keys to the kingdom.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > then import restriction negotiation, etc
|
| I don't think many of us have ever seen this step.
| midtake wrote:
| Is it worth the long term increase in cost if Apple pays
| Masimo? It's not a one off where you just pay up to continue
| operations. Pay one and many more will line up. I am sure
| Apple's analysts already have a number for how much profit
| they'd slough off if they pay off Masimo and many more follow.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| What no one's mentioned here is: this is an International Trade
| Commission ruling, not a US court or PTO ruling.
|
| So Apple cannot _import_ those watches. They _could_ probably
| build them in the US (now there 's a thought), and injunctions
| against domestic products are possible but very unusual. Usually
| there are damages, not injunctions.
| solardev wrote:
| Can we still manufacture electronics here, even if we wanted
| to? I thought all the expertise and machinery was outsourced a
| long time ago?
| jrockway wrote:
| We can manufacture electronics here, though the exact details
| of the Apple Watch are probably not easy to accommodate. (The
| manufacturing engineers knew it would be built in China, so
| they chose parts and processes that are mature there. For
| example, if the requirement was for all the parts to be made
| in the US, then it would probably use an Intel chip, since
| those are made in the US. It probably wouldn't get 2 days of
| battery life if they used one of those, however.)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Actually, there's no need to be all US-only. It's only the
| finished article that can't be imported.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> Can we still manufacture electronics here, even if we
| wanted to? I thought all the expertise and machinery was
| outsourced a long time ago?_
|
| Yes. There's a bunch of industries that either can't or don't
| bother manufacturing in China. The majority of the military
| industrial complex and much of the biotech/medical equipment
| industry, among many others. The former for natsec reasons
| and the latter because even after 20 years QC is still a
| shitshow.
|
| The problem is how spread out the industrial capacity is. In
| Shenzhen you can walk from the factory to a giant bazaar with
| every electronic part you could think of available to buy
| then and there in reel quantities. You can walk to any of
| hundreds of other factories and talk to the people on the
| floor to help design parts for their process. When the part
| is ready, they can courier it over to you within an hour.
|
| The cost of labor doesn't help either but at Apple scale, US
| companies would figure it out.
| contingencies wrote:
| Biotech/medtech is only a shitshow because it's typically
| small run. If the manufacturers actually committed resource
| they could achieve any outcome they desire. They are just
| passing the buck. (Source: Lived in Shenzhen for ages, had
| US friends managing the manufacturing of US medical
| devices, visited multiple times large factories producing
| biomed parts)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| That was why I had the parenthetical there.
|
| Yeah, it would cost them a boatload and introduce delays. Boo
| hoo, I feel so bad for them.
| manderley wrote:
| But that wouldn't vanish the patent issue?
| mission_failed wrote:
| It is wouldn't, but the ITC ruling is quicker to get than
| going to court for patent issues.
|
| Which is exactly why Apple uses import bans to screw with
| competitors importing headphones.
| orenlindsey wrote:
| Apple can't build a factory to produce Apple Watches before the
| entire situation would be resolved. And if they could, it would
| be much more expensive to run compared to making it in Vietnam
| (where they make it now).
|
| It would just be a stopgap solution.
| dijit wrote:
| I don't think anyone is _seriously_ considering that, I think
| the broader point is that by outsourcing and being a tad
| greedy they have shot themselves in the foot inadvertently.
|
| Of course, they'll have run the numbers and the cost of this
| fiasco is likely many-many orders of magnitude below the
| savings from using cheap labour.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| it would only be a stopgap if they didn't keep the US plant
| open.
|
| I'm sure almost every state in the US would offer incentives
| to locate the plant there.
| gnicholas wrote:
| In the meantime, retailers like Best Buy can sell units that have
| already been imported to the US, and Apple can still sell the SE.
|
| I wonder if Apple preemptively imported a ton of watches for
| resale, to give them some breathing room. I imagine the post-
| Christmas period is relatively slow, and they'll likely refresh
| the watches in May. Would it be possible for them to stuff the
| resale channels with 3 months of inventory, and then just move to
| a new generation of watches at WWDC?
| riley_dog wrote:
| Why May? They were just introduced in September.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I was thinking that was the soonest event at which they
| regularly announce new products. They probably weren't
| intending to revamp for a year, but under the circumstances
| they'll probably update sooner (or settle).
| nimbius wrote:
| Every time I read about This I am gobsmacked by just how big a
| cavalier blunder this is for apple.
|
| Who on gods earth at Cupertino thought the pittance you could
| save from sherlocking would somehow be more than the revenue from
| a new iPhone in 2023?
|
| Now you've either got to pay the license or buy the damn company.
| And you STILL had to admit to wrongdoing in front of the ITC and
| the world. Any acquisition you seek from now on is going to be a
| pretty cold reception if anyone cares at all to entertain it.
|
| I wager masimo will license this technology out to every
| competitor apple has until cooks pushing daisies and then open
| source it out of spite...or at least thats what I'd do ;)
| kshacker wrote:
| Or you can win the patent lawsuit and invalidate the patent !!
| hindsightbias wrote:
| The hubris here isn't simply about patents, it's about entering
| the medical devices field. Apple has rolled over a million
| patents probably.
|
| But the medical industry has lawyers as good as yours and
| bottomless pockets.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I've seen tons of articles/posts about this recently, but does
| anyone have any links to any good articles that describe the
| patent(s) in question, and what the arguments are about (a)
| whether this patent is truly novel (I've heard tons of "pulse
| oximetry is decades old" arguments, but nothing about the
| specifics of these patents) and (b) whether Apple is or isn't
| infringing on the specific details?
|
| I'm sure this kind of analysis must be out there, but I searched
| through a couple of posts and lots of comment threads and
| primarily saw a lot of conjecture but no actual references to
| what was really under debate.
| jjcm wrote:
| I too would be curious. That said, it's worth noting here that
| Masimo[0] is an actual company that produces pulse oximetry
| devices, not a patent troll.
|
| [0] https://www.masimo.com/
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Apple appeals US ban on Apple Watch_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38773177 - Dec 2023 (83
| comments)
|
| _Apple is officially no longer selling the newest Apple Watch in
| America_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38771436 - Dec
| 2023 (108 comments)
|
| _Apple to Halt Watch Sales as It Prepares to Comply with U.S.
| Import Ban_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38684156 - Dec
| 2023 (14 comments)
|
| _Apple to halt Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales in the US
| this week_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38682631 - Dec
| 2023 (482 comments)
|
| _Apple Watch violates patents held by Orange Co. tech company,
| ITC finds_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38059668 - Oct
| 2023 (104 comments)
|
| _Apple Faces Potential Watch Import Ban After Federal Trade
| Ruling_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38034964 - Oct
| 2023 (46 comments)
| gumballindie wrote:
| I am worried, but not for apple. I am worried for those poor
| souls so fixated on apple's products that they may not even try
| using a competing product. What will they do now? Where will they
| shop and consume? There will be no presents with the apple logo,
| nothing to post about on linkedin, nothing to be proud of,
| nothing to wear to show the world the product they love and
| crave. What if Tesla is next? Or openai? What if they will all he
| crushed by patent holders, or rent seekers. Truly there must be
| something we can do. Abolish patents maybe? Civil war? UBI? Musk
| and Tim save us. Or since this is due to "President Joe Biden's
| administration refused" maybe Trump will provide relief. Remains
| to be seen whom the hungry, angry, frightened, masses of
| consumers will chose as their leader to free them from the burden
| of small businesses oppressing corporations with their vicious
| patents.
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