They want a stay so the courts have time to make a decision, but last I heard from Masimo's CEO they haven't even come to the table to make a deal outside of court.
Why should good faith be extended to these thieves who are acting entitled to this technology even now and show no remorse or contrition? If they worked with Masimo they could develop an accurate FDA approved health sensor, but they want to sell their customers a second rate product that they stole and shoddily copied on the cheap.
It shouldn’t. They’ve done this and similar multiple times now, got downvoted for pointing it out in another thread. Apple is not acting in good faith here. Some beancounter determined it would be cheaper to steal the tech than acquire the company so they decided to do the wrong thing for the wrong reason.
I’ve yet to hear anyone even attempt to defend their behavior with a cogent argument.
>I’ve yet to hear anyone even attempt to defend their behavior with a cogent argument.
"Apple thinks the patent is invalid" doesn't seem plausible to you? Masimo's lawsuit against Apple earlier this year was declared a mistrial, which doesn't rule out Apple as being innocent, but also suggests that the facts are not clearly favoring Masimo as you might think.
Actually, you are looking at the wrong part of this.
The mistrial had nothing to do with the patents in play here (which in fact the court had preliminarily ruled in favor of Masimo's assertion that Apple violated its patent rights).
This trial, that was a mistrial, was over Masimo's allegation of "theft of trade secrets", in that Apple had multiple meetings with Masimo over its technology and learning all about it, then hired the people running those meetings from Masimo to Apple. Masimo alleges that information was shared in furtherance of a licensing deal or agreement, but that as soon as Apple knew what/who it needed, it abandoned them, and since it has not attempted to enter into any discussion with Masimo since, that this was its plan all along, and it never entered those discussions in good faith.
The mistrial was a result of lack of unanimity that Masimo demonstrated the theft of trade secrets - there was no patent component to this trial.
"Apple countered that it did not infringe the asserted claims of Masimo's patents and attempted to distinguish the technology underlying its pulse-oximetry technology. Apple also argued that Masimo's asserted patent claims were invalid as obvious over the prior art."
> There are established processes to invalidate a patent ?
Is there? IANAL, but I thought the standard procedure was to make your product and then wait for the patent holder to sue. That has the advantage that you get to bring your product to market faster, and don't have to wait years for the inevitable lawsuits to settle.
(Bearing in mind there are multiple cases going on here...)
> "Apple countered that it did not infringe the asserted claims of Masimo's patents and attempted to distinguish the technology underlying its pulse-oximetry technology. Apple also argued that Masimo's asserted patent claims were invalid as obvious over the prior art."
It did. And then the court ruled that there was sufficient merit to Masimo's claims. Hence the court ruling, and action we are seeing today. Apple's appeal will / should have to show that the court erred in that decision, with more than "we reiterate our previous claims" (a la "we strenuously object" in *A Few Good Men).
> but they want to sell their customers a second rate product that they stole and shoddily copied on the cheap.
Yup. When I think of Apple's engineering and design prowess, the first two phrases that come to mind are definitely "second rate" and "shoddily copied".
I wonder if their patent is something like "This is a patent for measuring blood oxygen by using measurement tools and methods to determine the amount of oxygen in the blood", not unlike the 1990's "uses computers to store and transmit [health] information" patents.
I worked for a medical company in ‘97 that had an SPO2 meter they thought was pretty special. That would surely be out of patent now. Wikipedia has the first example as 1935, and Minolta making the first commercial model in 1977.
Most of them have the sensor and emitter on opposing sides of an earlobe, or a finger. So maybe that’s the unique part?
It seems to be a combination of describing an arrangement of sensors, strapping those sensors onto someone, and having the strapped-thing be a touchscreen device with wireless comms.
As a layperson it does sound like one of those patents which we like to make fun of -- the "X but with a computer" ones that're conceptually incredibly obvious. That said, I don't know if the sensor arrangement they describe is actually a novel thing that wasn't already out-of-patent elsewhere.
Why should they come to the table and make a deal out of court? Apple is denying they are infringing the patent at all. Looking at the patent, it seems like one of those "X but with a computer" patents...
HN is more than one person, but these two opinions are somewhat compatible: patents should not exist, but as long as they do Apple needs to comply with them, not be given a pass.
I think we’re getting into muddy waters because the statement conflates moral, legal, and business frameworks implicitly.
Legally, they should follow patent law. Business wise, it may be cheaper not to, even considering fines, meaning it’s the right course of action if a business exists to generate as much profit as possible. Morals probably don’t even come into it from Apple’s perspective.
More consistent than you think- and the stronger each individual statement is, perhaps the more consistent with each other they become!
If only the most well-justified patents are allowed, and most patents rejected, then it follows that the patents that are left really deserve to be upheld and enforced
We need a quippy phrase, expression, or well-known analogy for the concept of “this system is or could be useful to society, so it is bad that it is being abused. I hate it as-is but it needs to be fixed not abolished.”
Of course, Apple is technically infringing here and not stealing and I'm using a metaphor.
Regarding the moral inconsistency, if we're talking about legitimately held intellectual property, I have a different attitude depending on if the powerful is taking from the disadvantaged, or the disadvantaged is taking from the powerful. My attitude towards Apple's industrial espionage of IBM back in the day is different than my attitude towards their industrial espionage of Masimo here. To bring up other contemporary examples, I support sci-hub and still consider XQC to be deplorable for infringing on the IP of poorer creators without due compensation. I tend to call the powerless infringers, and the powerful thieves.
I've never seen HN more pro-patent than when it means being anti-Apple. I wonder how an embedding model would rank "What is the best Thing?" for HN commenters... my guess is patents would be near the bottom, but Apple would be even lower. Where would "proprietary software" fit int?
What's the issue? Over-simplifying "slightly" the argument is:
HN: patents are terrible and should be abolished
also HN: while patents are terrible, it's a reality that they're not going anywhere right now. so in the meantime, it makes sense to apply their most annoying implications also and especially to a huge corporation that is one of the most powerful pro patent advocates and patent (ab)users.
I don't see an inconsistency here.
Edit: flipping this around, why should it be this?
Also HN: let's give apple a pass here. sure, they can and do use patents as weapons, but we should show them lenience when they're on the receiving side.
Years ago quite a few prominent HN commenters were quite adamant about defending the legitimacy of Apple's "rounded corners" design patents. If Apple's competitors need to respect patents protecting Apple, then Apple needs to respect patents too.
*unsheathes swords* "Leave alone the multi-trillion dollar corporation"
I will. Customers benefit from features. In this case the feature is using light to measure blood oxygen, which has been done for close to a century, and was invented before the company trolling Apple was even formed. Unfortunately our broken patent system issues this troll a patent for technology that already existed, but they claim it is novel because they are permanently affixing the device to a person and adding a touchscreen. None of that is inventing anything, and preventing others from doing it directly harms competition and end users.
> Unfortunately our broken patent system issues this troll a patent
Masimo isn't exactly a patent troll. They've been around for decades making medical devices that are in almost every hospital. And as a healthcare provider, the devices they make are actually some of the nicer ones in that segment.
The problem with your argument is it presupposes that Apple is this helpless company just trying to make our lives better. It completely ignores that Apple had dozens of meetings with Masimo, feigning interest in a partnership or agreement, getting into the weeds of the technology, and as soon as it had learned enough, it bailed out of that agreement, hired the people involved and started making things.
I have no particular horse in the game (indeed I own an Apple Watch, though I am a paramedic - but not one who uses Masimo devices in my ambulance, but use them when getting a patient to hospital), but acting like Masimo is some PE-backed patent troll is very inaccurate. It has put devices on the market that have been absolutely genuine advances in the field of non-invasive monitoring.
> It completely ignores that Apple had dozens of meetings with Masimo, feigning interest in a partnership or agreement, getting into the weeds of the technology, and as soon as it had learned enough, it bailed out of that agreement, hired the people involved and started making things.
If this happened as you described then Masimo’s leadership would be at fault for not adequately protecting its IP until a deal was on the table.
Here [1] is the CEO of Masimo (a public company, making medical devices for decades)
It seems that Apple deceived Masimo that they are interested in collaborating, and then proceeded to poach Masimo's technical people to basically steal their technology.
If the company whose workers were hired away didn’t want that to happen, they should have paid them more or offered better benefits.
When this happens, it’s because workers are winning. Not just those with a new better-paying job, but everyone in the sector that benefits from rising wages.
You are implying that a company has any ownership whatsoever over its workforce. It does not. The workers are not “theirs”, and they are presumably employed under an “at-will” agreement.
Companies and owners sure do get upset when it’s the workers that take advantage of “at-will”.
> You are implying that a company has any ownership whatsoever over its workforce
No I’m not. I’ve never once commented on “ownership”
I just said Apple have deeper pockets so it’s not exactly a fair fight in response to your comment that Masimo should have offered to pay them more.
> If the company whose workers were hired away didn’t want that to happen, they should have paid them more or offered better benefits.
It’s just like when legal threats are made against smaller companies or individuals. Sure, those smaller entities could in theory fight their case. But in practice they usually cannot afford to go head to head with Apple and co, so instead cave to whatever the big corp demands are.
To me the poaching aspect isn't about the workers rights, which are as you said.
It's about the company, Apple, being where it is not supposed to be, for its own gains.
If Apple had said "Can we come to your offices and have a bunch of meetings with your employees to see which we might be interested in hiring?" do you think that Masimo would have indulged that?
Now Apple came and said "We're really interested in a partnership and agreement and licensing with you and want to understand the tech of this space better". And then said "Actually, thanks for sharing all this, but we never really intended to do anything other than mild corporate espionage, and this was just the cover story."
The King owns the land, not the deer. The deer are free to leave… and if they enter onto someone else’s land they may be hunted by someone else. But this assumes they do leave.
It’s one thing to message someone on LinkedIn. It’s something else to enter into a competitors place of business and make the same offers.
Is poaching talent illegal? I thought tech employees have successfully sued big tech companies for anti-poaching policies many years ago?
Could they have spoken to Masimo, determined that their asking price for the technology is unreasonable, the patents are not very defensible, Apple could develop it internally for much cheaper, and finally decide to also pay Masimo's employees more to increase development speed?
That would be IP theft and is completely unrelated to the patent system, and that hasn’t been proven in this case fwiw.
While some patents were found to have been infringed, that is different than IP theft even if the same people are involved.
It’s a poor extrapolation or idea anyway. Patents are public, and no sane entity would hire someone to reimplement a patent without a license.
More likely, they thought they were far enough from the patents in their new implementation and either did not know of the specific patents (were the same employees named on those patents?) or had a different reading of the invention described.
To establish IP theft wouldn't one have to establish the existence of physical evidence (aka Hard Discs, emails, or any other data/documents transfers)?
No, you can also discover similarity in implementation to a degree that is much more scrutinized than patent infringement.
Hiring employees away to work on the same field of technology isn’t illegal by any means (and is explicitly not allowed to be illegal in California’s non compete rules).
Your comment said they hired them to replicate patented technology being illegal. It is not illegal, unless IP theft is involved.
But there’s been no evidence or even accusations towards that by the parties involved. That’s why the case has been purely in patent law and not corporate theft.
That they were found to have infringed the patents doesn’t have enough information to extrapolate legality of the hiring or work they did. Otherwise every other area of patent dispute like modems and design patents would be full of IP theft rulings too as folks move around.
Apple must license tens of thousands of patents for their products. What is so special about not paying for these? Is this dispute even about the patents at this point or just some kind of feud with Masimo?
Apple disagrees that they violated any of Masimo’s patents (and most of them were indeed dismissed in court so far). If they can win that legal battle, that will be the better outcome for Apple long-term. So that’s the route they’re going.
Masimo’s CEO claimed that they offered settling but that Apple didn’t even respond to that offer.
"Apple disagrees that they violated any of Masimo’s patents (and most of them were indeed dismissed in court so far). If they can win that legal battle, that will be the better outcome for Apple long-term. So that’s the route they’re going."
It may surprise you to learn that it's totally common to have patent settlement agreements where you retain your right to appeal, and only owe money if the appeal fails.
So they can in fact likely both get things back on the shelves, and still appeal.
Could someone knowledgeable on the patent in question chime in on its defensibility? Masimo doesn’t seem like a patent troll here, they sell products, including a watch that take advantage of their patents presumably; however, I’m curious how broad the patent in question actually is.
Having tested a bunch of of fingertip SpO2 sensors for $reasons, i will say they are the real deal.
In particular, the most important thing they have accomplished (though i don't think apple uses it) is that they have fingertip SpO2 meters that work ~fine during exercise.
Most fingertip SpO2 meters cannot handle movement at all, or a very small amount (apple's watch requires you remain completely still). Those that claim to work give mostly nonsense results.
Meanwhile, Masimo has fingertip meters that work fine while, say, biking, for example.
Staring at the particular patent, it looks like patent that covers a specific arrangement of sensors and processors, which i can believe is important to make something like a watch work properly.
It's basically "take this arrangement of sensors and put it on a smartwatch". So a lot of my opinion of it is going to rest on whether the arrangement of sensors is actually novel, or whether this is Masimo taking a long-existing setup and saying "but with a computer!" like all the most-mockable obvious patents.
USITC and exclusion orders are rendered void if everything was made domestically
You can limit patent holders options by bringing supply chain here
Just another incentive
Hey and we wont have to play geopolitical football with random conflicts around the world just so Taiwan feels safe, for now. We could ignore them all and let some other countries pick up the slack if anybody actually cares to misappropriate their resources like we do.
All the chips are in our hands and its only a net benefit for us
> USITC and exclusion orders are rendered void if everything was made domestically
>You can limit patent holders options by bringing supply chain here
Sure, you might get USITC off your back if manufacturing was domestic, but surely there are other agencies tasked with patent enforcement once you're onshore?
Exactly, if a court actually finds damages then the monetary tally just racks up as you keep making money from a product, but no federal agency currently has authority to stop you from selling the product at all. maybe a judge could go that far, but thats not been the path and its a super high bar to get that far
> Exactly, if a court actually finds damages then the monetary tally just racks up as you keep making money from a product, but no federal agency currently has authority to stop you from selling the product at all.
No, a court absolutely can issue a permanent injunction on further sales as well as damages for past behavior, and defying such a court order (as well as being the basis for further civil litigation by the offended private party) absolutely can be the basis of civil and or criminal contempt actions by the originating court and compulsory enforcement actions related to that by law enforcement (US Marshals, in the case of a federal court order.)
This seems like more proof that patents are harmful and should be abolished.
Patents at this point seem to be more about seeing which company’s lawyers can create the broadest-worded patents possible than about any sort of encouragement of innovation. Apple is also guilty of this, so I get that it’s satisfying to see them on the receiving end, but in the end the whole system is clearly broken.
If Apple's in trouble for infringing on Masimo's patent, why would Masimo's watch have any better accuracy? The whole issue is that they're doing it the same way...
"In today’s filing, Apple’s attorneys claimed the $3 trillion company “will suffer irreparable harm” if the models remain off the shelves during legal proceedings."
It's literally true, in the sense that they'll suffer harm and it won't be fixed if the appeal goes in their favor. They'll lose sales, and those sales won't just back-up and all get made the instant the product is on the market again.
It's not an amount of harm that's actually significant to Apple, I'm sure, but it is irreparable.
What you are describing is a textbook case of no irreparable harm.
Legally, if later money damages suffice to make someone whole, it is not considered irreparable harm. By definition:
"Irreparable harm is a legal term that refers to harm or injury that cannot be adequately compensated or remedied by any monetary award or damages that may be awarded later. "
Irreparable harm is like "they are going to physically destroy the i'm trying to save".
You're right, it's not actually the direct lost-sales that they're calling irreparable harm. Reading further into the legal filing, it seems that they're arguing that having to take the Watch off the market will cause damage to their reputation and to public goodwill, and cite some earlier cases indicating that those both qualify as irreparable harm. (Page 6.)
Both yourself and the GP are technically correct depending on how you choose to interpret harm on the company.
The problem is that the tone of that claim implies the kind of harm that is significant while being just vague enough to also be covered under your interpretation should they get challenged on that statement.
Thus I would argue that Apple are still being disingenuous even if they are technically correct.
I'd think they were being disingenuous if it was a PR statement, but this is just people quoting the legal filing by Apple's lawyers. My understanding is that "irreparable harm" is the core component of the legal requirement for getting a stay like this, so using the words when requesting it seems pretty unavoidable. (And a legal filing is precisely the place to be making technically-exact statements.)
I don’t think our point are mutually inclusive. Legal filings with big corporations have seldom been about sincerity. So even if your point is correct (which I don’t doubt) that doesn’t also mean Apples argument is sincere too.
Hmm. I'm not following. It's technically accurate. So how are you judging sincerity here? People forget that while Apple is huge, that also makes them a big target. There's no room for them to play nicey nice in court.
The GPs point was that this ban is a drop in the ocean (financially speaking) for Apple. So claims of irreparable harm is a little over the top. Which is correct from a financial / social perspective.
You are claiming that from a legal stand point Apple are correct. Which is also true.
My point is that both arguments are correct. One doesn't contradict the other.
You touched a little on this when you said there's no room to play nicely in court. And I agree with that. That's exactly why statements like that are used in legal claims. But what you're failing to empathise with is why they're used. It's because it is "technically correct" to the extreme edge of reality. And that's why the GP scoffed.
Or to put it another way: the alternative would be Apple saying "yeah we were a little underhanded and this ban wouldn't affect the health of the company, but we'd like to appeal the ban regardless". That would also be technically correct but you're not going to win any legal arguments that way. So of course Apple are going to write the most dramatised version of facts that favour themselves.
The problem with being technically correct is that there are a multitude of ways one can say the same technically correct thing yet convey a completely different story.
So yes, you are right. But I can also totally see why some might scoff at the Apples statement when taken verbatim. Frankly, it is a bit of an absurd statement. If it were made in any other circumstance outside of a legal appeal, it would be a pretty absurd claim to make. Literally the only reason one can defend that comment is because it's a legal statement.
And hence why both parties in this thread are correct.
Do you think I is not true? They will miss some sales, and thus revenue from this. Maybe many are unsympathetic, but it seems to be a factual prediction.
I mean people will just wait to buy the Apple Watch when it gets resolved and they are on sale again. It’s not like people will flock to the alternatives.
The harm is only significant if it drags out for a significant period of time. Apple will probably just remove some functionality and keep selling.
I mean it’s a watch, and the timekeeping aspects aren’t patented (I don’t think). Calculator watches existed since the 80s so that’s ok…my friend had a game on his watch in the 80s so that’s ok..
Why should good faith be extended to these thieves who are acting entitled to this technology even now and show no remorse or contrition? If they worked with Masimo they could develop an accurate FDA approved health sensor, but they want to sell their customers a second rate product that they stole and shoddily copied on the cheap.