Apple’s request was granted by the U.S. appeals court
Apple Shouldn’t Joke! The Masimo CEO is Turning Up the Heat on the Patents: An Argument from the Founders of True Wearables
“This might be a long, drawn out game of cat and mouse with whether or not they’re violating the patents,” he said. “If they’re successful at getting the workaround to get the product back on the market, I suspect that would be a measurable win for them to win the case in the long term.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is currently considering Apple’s software redesign to the watch models and is expected to make a decision by Jan. 12.
One year after its win against True Wearables, Masimo CEO Joe Kiani is turning up the heat on Apple. “This is not an accidental infringement — this is a deliberate taking of our intellectual property,” Kiani said in an interview with Bloomberg. These guys have been caught with their hands in a jar.
“Apple created a false shortage of products by making a patent loss look like a market opportunity, so that people would rush out and get them before they were off the market,” he said.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt, a reporter and editor who has covered Apple since 1983, suggested the company might have strategically pulled some of its watches before filing its emergency request to the appeals court.
Sound familiar? Well, the pulse oximeter tech isn’t the only parallel between Masimo’s cases against True Wearables and Apple: before starting True Wearables, founder and CEO Marcelo Lamego worked at both Masimo and Apple, where he helped develop similar technologies. The company claims that Apple cannot have developed the technology for the Apple Watch without him but Apple sees things a bit differently.
“I think it’s advantage Apple here, they have this piece in their favor here, and what’s more important than their jockeying in the courts is Apple’s ability to find a workaround,” Munster said.
Apple’s iPod Touch: The Case of a Blood Oxygen Sensor infringed by the U.S. Trade Commission
Apple stated in a statement that it disagreed with the decision and would take all measures to return Apple Watches to customers in the US as soon as possible.
The technology included in the Series 9 and Ultra 2 versions was banned by the commission. Apple removed those products from store shelves.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit pauses the ban as Apple appeals an October decision by the U.S. International Trade Commission that found some Apple Watches infringed on the patents of a blood oxygen sensor made by Masimo. The feature on most of Apple’s watches was added in 2020.
The email was written to Apple CEO Tim Cook and offered to help the company develop a new wave of technology that would make it the number one brand in the medical, fitness and wellbeing device industry.
True Wearables was sued by Masimo over claims that its wireless pulse oximeter did not violate its patent. The court sided with Masimo and issued a permanent injunction against the sale of the device in December 2022.