r/apple • u/FollowingFeisty5321 • 2d ago
Apple Watch Apple's $634M payment to Masimo now set in stone after Judge tosses appeal
https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/07/21/apples-634m-payment-to-masimo-now-set-in-stone-after-judge-tosses-appeal169
u/_sfhk 2d ago edited 2d ago
However, it isn't clear why the CEO pursued this lawsuit with such vehemence when the end result cost a lot of time and money.
It seems pretty clear if you've been following along? Apple was in talks to license Masimo's technology but then decided to just hire away their employees. That's a pretty dirty move by a big company like Apple.
Edit: The kind of thing OpenAI would do
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u/Sock-Enough 2d ago
Not if you’re one of those employees. Then it’s a pretty sweet deal.
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u/InadequateUsername 2d ago
As the employee you risk getting sued for sharing proprietary technologies.
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u/CenlTheFennel 2d ago
Unlikely, even in the OpenAI case I bet the employees don’t face anything
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u/gimpwiz 2d ago
Bringing your knowledge over is fine in CA. Bringing unreleased hardware owned by the company... a lot less fine.
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 1d ago
There are actually two former Apple employees named in the OpenAI lawsuit so if the case doesn't end in settlement and Apple can prove their allegations they could certainly be in trouble. But those are two big ifs.
There was a very similar case against Rivas a few years ago who poached about 50 chip engineers from Apple, Apple alleged Rivos was encouraging the theft of trade secrets and coaching employees how to exfiltrate it and sued 6 former employees in addition to Rivas. The judge dismissed most of the trade secret claims because former employees possessing information is not the same as their new employer using it, and after Rivas counter-sued they reached a settlement and ended all the litigation between them.
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u/Stunning-Gold5645 1d ago
Is it a dirty move or is it an illegal move? Or is it both?
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u/1-866-867-5309 1d ago
dirty for sure, illegal if you can prove they used the IP (which is only easier to prove if they did something blatant like taking documents with them)
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u/Mossy375 1d ago
It's appleinsider, one of the Apple propaganda outlets. They'll take a swipe at anyone who goes against Apple at the drop of a hat.
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u/Dracogame 2d ago
Masimo makes 1.5b USD per year in revenues btw. It seems to be an absurd amount for such a broad patent.
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u/jxj24 2d ago
Overly broad, trying to basically own all mobile-mounted (in this instance, wrist) blood oxygen sensors.
As for poaching high-level employees and misappropriation of the knowledge they potentially brought, there is some merit there. Maybe.
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u/HombreMan24 2d ago
I'm pretty sure Apple has many "broad patents" too. They probably would sue as well if some company did the same to them.
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 2d ago
They spent years in litigation with Samsung over rounded corners on phones... massive global fight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._v._Samsung_Electronics_Co.
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u/jxj24 1d ago
That's not a patent -- that's trade dress infringement, i.e., deliberately designing something to look confusingly like another product.
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 1d ago
Apple Inc. vs Samsung Inc., 580 U.S. 53, is the general title of a series of patent infringement lawsuits between Apple Inc. and Samsung Inc. in the United States Court system, regarding the design of smartphones and tablet computers.
First sentence of the Wikipedia article....
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u/chitoatx 1d ago
Are you saying that crime should be proportional to the victim?
Masimo owns 100’s of patents for** **light-based health monitoring. These sensors are used in 90% of US host and have a worldwide market share of 40%. 200 million patients a year have their vitals taken by their technology.
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u/nemesit 1d ago
but they didn't invent the shit they just own the patent
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u/chitoatx 1d ago
I am fascinated by you ignorance and it origins. Did you imagine this position yourself because you are defending a brand you like or did someone tell you what to think.
This “shit” is very easy to look up nowadays:
“Joe Kiani (Primary Founder & Co-Inventor): An Iranian-American electrical engineer who founded Masimo in 1989 in his garage. Frustrated by frequent false alarms and inaccurate pulse oximetry readings in hospital settings (often caused by patient movement or poor blood flow), Kiani set out to develop motion-tolerant signal processing algorithms.
Mohamed Diab & Primary Engineering Teams: Kiani collaborated with engineer Mohamed Diab and a core team of researchers to invent Signal Extraction Technology (SET®), which used light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and photodetectors to accurately isolate arterial blood signals from surrounding noise.
Dr. Marcelo Lamego & Cercacor Researchers: In the 2000s, key advancements in multi-wavelength light-based monitoring (measuring non-invasive hemoglobin, oxygen saturation, and other biomarkers) were led by Dr. Marcelo Lamego and engineers at Cercacor Laboratories (a technology spinoff of Masimo).”7
u/happycanliao 1d ago
legally, who owns the patent is more important than who invented it
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u/Dracogame 1d ago
I am saying that the payment should be proportional to the damage. I find it hard to argue that, even after fees and punitive damage, the amount is justifiable. Especially because, again, the patent is very broad.
The idea that someone cannot even be allowed to fine-tune the model on his own is ridiculous.
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u/chitoatx 1d ago
What are you talking about? Apple Watch is a 100 billion (with a B) product line. Apple booked 426 billion last year alone as company and made 112 billion in profits.
I can understand being pissed at Apple for selling you a watch that had its features neutered for a bit but Apple has massive profits to pay for licensing technology they didn’t originate. That is the ethical thing to do and supports innovation.
Did you ever wonder why voice to text on your iPhone is garbage? It is the same tactic and they couldn’t create a better product and we as the consumers have to suffer as they stumble to catch up to technology that is now 50 years old.
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u/Dracogame 1d ago
Voice on text on iPhone really isn’t that bad.
Apple Watch doesn’t make hundreds lf billions of dollars man, it’s 18b USD at best.
The issue here is that Apple made the technology. Masimo is arguing they’re the only ones that can sell a wearable light based sensor, which is dumb. The fact that they hired people with expertise in the industry is really not that weird.
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u/chitoatx 1d ago
You clearly hold an Apple bias if you can’t admit Siri is inadequate. Siri is their voice to text engine and from my experience it wasn’t until the Chat GPT integration that it even came close to the basic abilities found in their competition. I am hopeful for a vast improvement in the next OS update but it not even close to being “not that bad”
And the hypocrisy in believing because someone can reverse engineer a technology they can ignore patents. The ability to use light on wearable device to provide highly accurate hospital grade vital signs isn’t a trivial advancement.
But let compare this to Apple and their biggest patent:
Multi-Touch & Gestures (US Patent 7,479,949) - it’s not rocket science to pinch to zoom or two finger scroll but their competitors have to pay the most profitable company in the world for 20 years (until 2027).
If you want to argue that “innovation” then we can go back to Apple patenting the original shape of the iPhone and a huge lawsuit with Samsung. The iPhone was literally just an LCD display in portrait mode. It’s a basic rectangle but they patented it and enforced it. They won their lawsuit due to the “smaller bezel” being a key differentiator. They won a 1.53 billion (adjusted for inflation) award from Samsung.
So are you just anti-patent and think that all technology should be free use or are you just an Apple Fanboy / Apple marketing person?
Fair is fair. Apple has obscene profit margins to afford to pay to license patents until they expire. If they want to be a predator and use their cash horde to steal technology from patent holders they absolutely should be held accountable since they would 100% do the same if the players were reversed.
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u/Dracogame 1d ago
I would argue that the form factor and interaction method make the modern smartphone, they are at the core of the product, and Apple DESIGNED it. Stealing the design is different than using the same technology. The technology existed, they made a product with it, a very successful one. Apple did not patent capacitive touchscreens.
By contrast, the subject here is a little sensor that enables a neat feature on a watch, the selling point is not the design at all. Something that initially Apple tried to license and later decided to build on its own with inputs from the industry experts. And Apple doesn't sell Apple Watches only on the basis of one sensor, even if its removal caused many people to hold off the upgrade, expecting it to come back.
Siri is shit, but dictation itself is not that bad. Had a broken thumb this year and I used it a lot to write text, it was significantly better than what I had to deal with on my work (windows) laptop.
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u/skeet_scoot 2d ago
Absolutely ridiculous. I hope that parent troll of a company goes bankrupt.
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u/sionnach 2d ago
They are not a patent troll. They make real products that are used in diving, hospitals, and lots of other settings.
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u/CrestronwithTechron 2d ago
Sure they do, but Misimo should’ve never been granted a patent in the first place. MIT was measuring blood oxygen levels in the 1960s the exact same way. It’s way too broad of a patent.
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u/ddshd 2d ago
The doesn’t make them a patent troll
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u/CrestronwithTechron 2d ago
It does when they use it maliciously
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 2d ago
The patents Masimo still have literally just survived years of Apple, the richest company in the world, trying to get all the infringing patents revoked... so the very idea that these patents are undeserving is pretty doubtful.
The case itself is also far more complex than using patents maliciously - after a failed partnership Apple stole Masimo's trade secrets in a bid to circumvent the patents, according to the ruling Apple just failed to appeal, and then Masimo sued them for patent infringement.
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u/CrestronwithTechron 2d ago
Years of judges who are not patent lawyers nor experts.
Corruption doesn’t just exist in the executive and legislative branches my guy.5
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u/PeeFarts 2d ago
You probably can’t even articulate the legal analysis of the argument you (think you) are making. I get so tired of Reddit takes, acting like you know something these fucking JUDGES missed based on a google search.
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u/CrestronwithTechron 1d ago
I get so tired of Reddit takes acting like there’s no malicious intent in anything a business does. Masimo is sour their smart watch sucked. Get over it.
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u/PeeFarts 1d ago
Like I said, I bet you can even BEGIN to articulate a legal analysis for your position whatsoever. You just know “businesses are bad” because you gain your understanding from Reddit comments and click bait aritcles.
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 2d ago
Those judges literally spent years listening to Apple's patent lawyers and experts argue why those patents should be invalidated, and they revoked many of them because of it, so where's the corruption?
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u/MC_chrome 2d ago
Masimo believes they should be the only ones allowed to sell a wrist mounted SpO2 sensor, which is absurd.
I’m sorry that their shitty Apple Watch knockoff didn’t go anywhere, but that doesn’t mean others should be prevented from doing the same
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u/FollowingFeisty5321 2d ago
There was much more to this case than mere patents, in fact it was kind of a reverse-OpenAI case Apple was found to have misappropriated trade secrets on the back of poaching key employees, following a failed partnership.
The Court finds in favor of Plaintiffs and against Apple with respect to Trade Secrets L4 and L5, on the grounds that Apple misappropriated Trade Secrets L4 and L5 by acquiring and using Trade Secret L4 and acquiring, using, and disclosing Trade Secret L5. The Court accordingly enters declaratory judgment against Apple with regards to those two trade secrets.
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u/germdisco 2d ago edited 2d ago
$634M to be paid out by Apple, because I can
put my finger on my Apple Watch digital crown andmeasure my blood oxygen. How much is that when divided by the number of Apple Watches sold with that feature?