Apple, and the Apple Watch in particular, were hit with a legal one-two punch on Friday. A jury found against the tech giant, ordering it to pay $634 million to the health tech company Masimo. On the same day, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) announced it will reexamine whether it may want to impose an import ban on Apple Watches—also due to Masimo-related concerns.
It’s a huge dual victory for Masimo, whose multi-year legal battle with Apple has been sprawling and seemingly endless.
Apple issued a statement to Yahoo Finance addressing the situation. A representative said, “Over the past six years, Masimo has sued in multiple courts and asserted over 25 patents, the majority of which have been found to be invalid.”
The verdict in this case concerns a patent that Apple claims “expired in 2022 and is specific to historic patient monitoring technology from decades ago.”
In response to the ITC actions, in 2024 Apple removed the blood oxygen monitor feature from its watches to avoid an import ban. The redesigned Apple Watches now under renewed ITC scrutiny are not the same models the jury found to have infringed on Masimo’s patents.
For context, Masimo’s technology is primarily designed for hospital and clinical use, but the company claimed that Apple had copied its patented pulse-oximetry technology for the watch’s workout and heart-rate monitoring functions.
Apple’s argument—that the patent expired in 2022 and that the Apple Watch is a consumer gadget rather than a hospital tool—failed to convince the jury.
Meanwhile, a November 14 order from the ITC states that the commission will now investigate whether Apple’s workaround, implemented to circumvent a past import ban, also infringes on a Masimo patent. The order clarifies, “This proceeding does not afford an opportunity to relitigate other defenses that were, or should have been, litigated in the underlying violation investigation.”
This legal saga between Apple and Masimo has had many twists and turns. Perhaps the most entertaining was when Apple won a countersuit against Masimo last year after Masimo released its own smartwatch product. Apple was awarded $250 in damages.
Apple’s claim in that case was that Masimo infringed on its design patents, with representatives noting that the ultimate goal of the suit was an injunction, not damages.
The entire complicated affair reportedly dates back to 2013, when Apple first sought to collaborate with Masimo on developing watches that monitor users’ pulses. Apple then ended up hiring two former Masimo executives, reportedly offering them salaries twice as high as their previous pay, according to a Los Angeles Times report.
However, it didn’t end there. Masimo engineer Joe Kiani claimed that Apple poached more than just those two executives. “A lot of my people didn’t go, but they still got 20 of my people,” Kiani said.
A 2023 Wall Street Journal article detailed how Apple approaches partnerships with smaller firms like Masimo and described practices that some allege amount to stealing ideas.
“When Apple takes an interest in a company, it’s the kiss of death,” Kiani told the Journal.
As this ongoing legal battle continues to unfold, it remains to be seen how Apple will respond next and what impact these decisions will have on its products and partnerships moving forward.
https://gizmodo.com/apple-suffers-2-defeats-in-one-day-amid-patent-war-with-masimo-2000686437
