Pausing the ban during appeals seems generally reasonable. After all, the point of there being an appeal is that the case isn't actually settled yet, so leaving the status quo in place until it is seems less-harmful overall. Possibly with some kind of clawback requirement for if the appeal fails.
Apple's argument was that it was being irreparably harmed by having to take the Watch off the market. Not for lost sales, which are reparable by handing money to Apple, but for the reputation / goodwill cost of consumers being exposed to the turmoil. (There's established case law that this does count as irreparable, so the main question would be whether they're really being harmed in that way.)
To get to a retrial you'd need the case (or a part of it) thrown out, in which case the ban should definitely be invalidated until the new trial happens.
Generally an appeal like this is just a short pause while they work out whether there's more that needs to be done in the case, and so it hurts less to stop the ban for a few days while that's happening. Then if it actually goes up to an appeals court for more expensive lawyer-work the issue would indeed still be undecided and the pause should continue. For a company that's not a behemoth like Apple you could certainly imagine a poorly-decided import ban causing them to run out of money to fight it, after all.
> Then if it actually goes up to an appeals court for more expensive lawyer-work the issue would indeed still be undecided and the pause should continue.
Not sure I understand this logic. There are basically two outcomes- either customs decides it is okay to be imported and the ban is lifted or it decides it should be upheld and the ban remains. If it were to be appealed to a higher court and then have the ban reinstated as you say, why would it make sense to pause the ban and then reinstate it when it goes to appeals since it’s already in place? Seems it should be upheld until a higher authority says it no longer needs to be upheld. I’m not sure I understand why third parties are still allowed to violate a ruling, either.
Apple's saying that the import ban will hurt them in ways that can't be fixed, and so it makes sense to stay it until their appeal decides what's going to happen. It's why this stay is only for ~2 weeks, because that's all they think is needed to get to a more-permanent decision from the appeals court.
The idea is that harms that can't be fixed (by e.g. ordering someone to pay money) should be avoided until the system has settled on a definite answer.
> I’m not sure I understand why third parties are still allowed to violate a ruling, either.
The ruling is just blocking imports, not sales. I don't think that Apple is actually required to freeze its own sales, per se, but they're very just-in-time for stock so it was an effective ban for them unless they wanted to stockpile.
Third parties are thus able to sell through whatever stock they have.
> Pausing the ban during appeals seems generally reasonable. After all, the point of there being an appeal is that the case isn't actually settled yet, so leaving the status quo in place until it is seems less-harmful overall. Possibly with some kind of clawback requirement for if the appeal fails.
Recall that Apple is appealing the decision of an agency, not a court. Staying an agency's decision until an actual court can review the agency's decision makes sense. An analogy: migrants seeking asylum in the USA should be permitted to remain in the USA until their appeals process is completed even after an immigration judge decides not to grant the asylum-seeker asylum.
> Obviously you can't attend a court hearing if you have already been killed or deported.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were a reversion to the "remain in Mexico" policy in the coming months. This flipped the presumption on whether the applicant was going to prevail on the merits, presumably because such a small percentage do ultimately qualify. There is a growing sentiment, including in bright blue cities, that the current system, which presumes applicants will qualify for asylum, is not tenable.
Interesting example. There are plenty of other examples that go the other way, for example if someone is found guilty of a crime but is appealing it. The default rule is that you are imprisoned during appeal. This is of concern to Trump supporters right now, since the precedent is so strong that it's not clear that being a top candidate for POTUS may not be enough to warrant an exception.
Guilty of a crime implies an actual judicial proceeding, not an administrative proceeding. Administrative proceedings occur under the powers of the executive branch alone.
I'm aware of the levels of review (IAAL), but the point is that these two levels of appeal could completely moot the situation because of the time delay involved.
Because it drastically shifts the bargaining power of the parties. The whole point of injunctions (which is what the ITC is able to order) is that they are prospective, not retrospective. If injunctions can be put on hold until all appeals are exhausted, as suggested above, that has a huge effect on the timeline on which this all plays out. Appeals take significant time, and Apple's refresh cycle is annual.
Also, some plaintiff's might have a hard time paying for all of the appeals — if a large defendant can simply wait them out, without regard to wins in courts of first impression, that is a boon for deep-pocketed companies.
We're not talking about consumer safety reasons here, and I was talking about a default posture not an absolute rule. The reason a judge has to approve pausing the ban is to work out whether it should happen in that particular case.
But this is a ban due to alleged patent infringement (or alleged abuse of the patent system, depending on one's opinion of Apple) - comparing this to a public harm/public-benefit scenario is a distraction.
And to add to that - there's no harm in allowing the sale of these devices to continue, because if the court upholds the ruling then Apple could always be sued for damages during that time(and there is no risk that Apple would not be able to pay it).
The risk is that consumers will be shafted by buying a product today that apple refuses to support later because they weren't actually allowed to sell it.
That's not a risk, because there's zero chance that Apple just abandons their latest Watches.
The worst possible outcome for customers is that Apple pushes a software update to disable the feature, but it's a fairly useless feature for most people.
Is it possible that Apple is fighting so hard on this because the Masimo patent also covers applications in blood glucose which Apple has sunken nearly a decade of intense fairly independent R&D into at this point?
That’s the beauty of this process from a patent troll perspective. It is expedited, and therefore can’t be blocked by having a proper review that could invalidate the patent.
> That’s the beauty of this process from a patent troll perspective
I know you didn't draw the connection explicitly, but I just wanted to point out that in this particular case, Masimo isn't a patent troll - they're a company that sells actual devices - https://www.masimopersonalhealth.com and is listed on the NASDAQ with market cap of $6 billion.
I’ll add that many were already invalidated as part of the ongoing legal battle. Apple was also not found to be infringing on others. There are only a few left in question at this point. Given the direction it has gone so far, Apple has a pretty good chance of being found to not infringe on any of them.
IIRC the ITC can rule that patents are invalid (or not infringed). ITC trials are more expedited than patent trials in District Courts, and an appeals court would also do a deeper dive. But that doesn't mean that the ITC's determination of infringement doesn't indicate that the ITC also found them to be valid. It's also possible that Apple didn't raise this argument at the ITC trial, but that would be very unlikely (it's one of the most obvious arguments to make when being sued for patent infringement).
What? If you presume that a patent is invalid, then what is the patent office for?
You pay them to make sure the patent in valid before granting it. Why would one part of the government always preaume that the other part of the government is wrong?
And they will likely succeed. In addition to this appeal to the Federal Circuit, which has the potential to pause the import ban for over a year if the stay is extended, Apple is also submitting a proposed software redesign to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
U.S. Customs will decide on January 12th whether the redesign is sufficient, and if it is sufficient Apple can continue its imports. Maismo would then need to head back to the ITC to argue that the software redesign still infringes their patents. That could easily take another year.
If Apple succeeds in either way, they will be able to draw out the litigation long enough for a full hardware redesign in the Apple Watch 10.
Yes, but not at the ITC, which doesn't have the power to award monetary damages. Masimo has sued Apple for unjust enrichment from trade secret theft already and sought damages, but the jury deadlocked 6-1 in favor of Apple. There's a retrial scheduled for next October and Masimo could add patent damage claims to that case.
The likely reason Masimo made the strategic choice to sue for for unjust enrichment instead of damages is that damages are limited to the license fees Apple would have paid in the alternative world where they sought a license. That's a relatively small amount of money compared to what Masimo is no doubt hoping to extract by blocking Apple Watch imports.
By the way, a court would not have enjoined Apple from importing or selling the Apple Watch. Masimo has a very small domestic consumer-facing industry putting their patents into practice and they they already license their patents to others, demonstrating that they could do so here as well. The ITC was the only place they were likley to get that remedy.
> The likely reason Masimo made the strategic choice to sue for for unjust enrichment instead of damages is that damages are limited to the license fees Apple would have paid in the alternative world where they sought a license.
How can you figure out what that license fee would have been? Couldn't Masimo argue they only would have ever licensed the technology for some huge sum of money?
So apple can play appeal games to keep the watch sales going and then just redesign a new watch? and if the appeals determine apple was actually in the wrong, they don't have to pay anything?
Kinda absurd lol. The US court system is so biased towards rich transgressors lmao.
Well, tbf to apple, no domestic court has ruled on this patent. Just domestic agencies and the ITC right?
Watching this unfold I was really hoping that the long-term solution here would be Apple moving (or at least announcing a move) Watch assembly to the US, if only to get around the _import_ ban. I realize that would take...rather a long time to set up, but it would have been one hell of a win (for the US, not so much for Apple).
Masimo has a market capitalization of a bit over $6 billion, so Apple presumably has a very long way to go before acquiring them is cheaper than continuing the lawsuit. Apple could certainly do a hostile takeover out of their cash-on-hand if they wanted to, though -- it'd take about 10% of what they have available.
I've not seem anyone manage to turn up what sort of terms Masimo would want to license their patent. It's certainly possible that what they want is unreasonable, particularly since they seem to be launching their own smartwatch. Of course, Apple famously loves its high margins on products, and it might be fighting here to keep a 30% profit on the Watch rather than 28%.
> Masimo has a market capitalization of a bit over $6 billion, so Apple presumably has a very long way to go before acquiring them is cheaper than continuing the lawsuit
> I've not seem anyone manage to turn up what sort of terms Masimo would want to license their patent. It's certainly possible that what they want is unreasonable
FTA: “In its earlier suit, which ended with a deadlocked jury, Masimo wanted Apple to pay more than $3 billion in damage”
So, they’re claiming that patent is worth half the company. I guess that’s, at least, quite a high initial offer.
No, they claim their company would be worth 1/2 more had Apple not infringed their patent. Or probably they're asking for something extra to compensate for the fact they have to sue. Anyway not directly related to current market cap.
Paying for what doesn't belong to them? I'm not qualified to analyze the patent claims, but assuming it's correct as determined, this hardly seems like a situation where Apple is being bullied and needs to stand on principle.
Is there a concrete explanation of what Masimo’s actual innovation was in their patents?
They were posted in a previous thread, and the way they were written made it unclear what was actually covered. Is Apple allegedly infringing on the idea of putting a blood oxygen sensor in a watch, a technical innovation in how to do so effectively, or something else entirely?
US-10192502-B2 Seems to cover using a lookup table to control the amount of light a liquid crystal on silicon device emits per pixel.
US-10945648-B2 seems to cover the heart of the issue. It specifically calls out
> four photodiodes configured to receive light emitted by the LEDs, the four photodiodes being arranged to capture light at different quadrants of tissue of a user;
Which is what I believe Apple was going to change via software disabling one.
Honestly it seems stretching to say the first one is patentable imho and the second one is easily changed for future hardware versions, which is why I presume Apple isn’t in licensing talks.
Would it be far fetched to hope that Apple could introduce a jailbreak mechanism in the Apple Watch for the purpose of providing users the option to enable and use all photodiodes for the pulse oximeter ?
It might be simpler than that. Like many other watch and phone features, it might just depend on the user's region. Hopefully only in software, but there's also precedent for regional hardware differences.
It’s regarding the arrangement of LED’s and sensors in the watch, along with the signal processing needed to get reasonable data out of them.
My impression of the whole debacle is that Masimo hired up a bunch of smart people, they invented this tech while being paid next-to-nothing by Masimo (as Masimo didn’t have the product development chops to actually bring anything to market), Apple saw that the tech was good and just neeeed a product/marketing team, Apple tried to acquire Masimo, their CEO tried to play hard to get, so Apple ”stole” (offered compensation commensurate to their technical prowess) all the engineers who actually made the thing and just built it in house from “scratch”.
It’s a tricky case to be sure. But I’m all for the outcome where consumers get cool tech and the people who actually made it (notably not the Masimo CEO) get fair compensation for their work.
The aspect a lot of people here gloss over is that the patent that Masimo owns wasn’t actually developed by anyone currently at Masimo. Apple “owns” all the people, but Masimo “owns” their accomplishments. It’s weird.
> My impression of the whole debacle is that Masimo hired up a bunch of smart people, they invented this tech while being paid next-to-nothing by Masimo (as Masimo didn’t have the product development chops to actually bring anything to market)
Your impression that Masimo "doesn't have product development chops to bring anything to market" is ... odd, considering Masimo is a nearly 40 year old company which has devices in most of the hospitals I see as a paramedic bringing patients in, and $2B a year in revenue.
> Apple tried to acquire Masimo, their CEO tried to play hard to get
Masimo stated in court - and Apple never challenged it - that their discussions were around partnership and licensing and tech. I have no idea where your claim that Masimo is just hurt/offended that they weren't "acquired by Apple". I can't even imagine why Masimo would be an acquisition target for Apple - there's an entire world of difference between personal healthcare and the world of ICUs, ORs and ERs that Masimo mostly plays in.
Honestly that’s even worse. So there’s a successful company that has no problem selling its products for tens of thousands of dollars as part of a perpetuation of the insurance-industrial complex whereby folks without access to “good insurance” can’t receive simple, potentially life saving analysis, but they refuse to pay their engineers fair compensation. So then the engineers try to go to a place where they will recice fair compensation and far more people will have access to the life saving equipment they developed, but the CEO of their old company throws a hissy fit over the technology being accessible to folks besides the ultra wealthy and sues them. Disgusting.
This makes little to no sense unless you take an absolutely literal view of the the "any price the market offers is in essence a fair market price" for the value of the engineers. You can't argue that without acknowledging that for the same reasons, until Apple offered those engineers more salary (and I don't think it was disclosed how different they were, just that someone made a comment of saying "$x is low"), then they were being paid the then-fair market value (I also think there's a very cogent argument to be had that SF engineering compensation is inflated). But leaving that aside:
Masimo makes as you note, industrial devices. The Root devices that I mention are not ever going to be used at home, even by the ultra wealthy.
I mean you are talking about devices that do CO-oximetry (effectively "arterial blood gas"), brain function monitoring, connect to ventilators (ISA capnography for intubated patients) and anesthesia machines and pushing aggregated data into EPIC. Like I said, these are devices being used in intensive care units, not simple finger pulse oximetry, reflected or otherwise.
They are not "gatekeeping" this technology for the ultra wealthy so poor Apple Watch owners (of which I am on my third) can't get access to it. They're entirely different models with different purposes, in an entirely differing market segment.
Also if you're referring to "potentially life saving analysis" with respect to pulse oximetry on the Apple Watch, which does it only on demand, and is not an FDA regulated medical device, regardless of patents, there's an exaggeration happening. Patients with chronic hypoxic and similar issues are not relying on Apple Watches to "potentially save their lives".
Do you have an idea of what “market value” is besides the value the market has assigned to a thing? I have no idea why you act like that is a bizarre take.
And why do you think engineers are making too much money while CEO’s are waking away with record profits off their backs?
All in all your argument is just anti-commoner pro-elite system gamers, and if that’s how you see things so be it. But I think people should be able to have their pulses measured even if the FDA doesn’t approve and they don’t have chronic hypoxia and they don’t want to integrate with Epic and they only need it on demand. I’ve had family members that were told they must go through complicated insurance processes to get fancy tens of thousands of dollar pulse measures, but then got by just fine with the watch. Masimo wants to put an end to that to secure their own profits, and this entire site loves them for it.
To add some anecdata to your story, I looked up a job on Masimo's site when this story first came out. $190k for a senior algo/signal processing programmer - PhD preferred - in CA. Masimo had no hope when big-tech turned their focus towards these types of programmers.
Right, and the only way laws change is by moneyed individuals testing them. We should be cheering this opportunity for an actually decent precedent to be set by Apple’s patent law army.
Though in all likelihood it will be settled out of court.
The engineers didn't invent the tech in their garage on their own, though. And I don't know if your narrative reflects the reality, but if it is, "creating" the same product for a different company even when you know that the product is patent-protected is ethically questionable. My position would be different if they launched a start-up based on the tech.
> My position would be different if they launched a start-up based on the tech.
Right, that’s my whole point really. People just look at this as “bad guy Apple” when really it’s a bunch of individual engineers getting absolutely shafted while the HN community cheers.
>But I’m all for the outcome where consumers get cool tech and the people who actually made it (notably not the Masimo CEO) get fair compensation for their work.
So Apple and their shareholders should make nothing on this either in a completely fair outcome?
They tried, Masimo gave them sky-high licensing fees as a means of extortion. It’s an absolute nightmare scenario for Masimo that this (fairly simple) technology would be available to anyone besides insurance companies who pay them tens of thousands of dollars a pop.
Imo it’s appropriate for the government to step in and allow the general public to receive access to this life saving equipment without folks needing a “good insurance” plan whereby some bean counter with no medical training has looked over all your medical records and decided you are worth dropping bundles of money on to have a constant pulse taken.
Isn't there treble(3x) damages for knowingly selling something that violates others' IP? This seems like a risky gambit by Apple. I'm not sure what their endgame is, but having those potential damages stack up in the likely scenario the patent violations get upheld seems like they would be a big deterrent to having Masimo come to the table and negotiate.
Yes, though it's not a bright-line test for what constitutes 'knowing' infringement. It can be less strict than the phrase suggests — if you had reason to know of the patent, even if you had never looked at it yourself, or it can be more strict — if you infringed a patent you were aware of, but you had received three opinion letters from top law firms saying that your product didn't infringe.
I've heard some companies say that they should never put in writing that they're aware of anyone else's IP, to mitigate the risk of treble damages.
> I've heard some companies say that they should never put in writing that they're aware of anyone else's IP, to mitigate the risk of treble damages.
I've been instructed by a big company to take all possible notes on my own ideas and experiments, and none at all on what information I found elsewhere.
I hear the opposite is true in trading, where to avoid insider trading allegations, you need notes on what publically available information you acted on, even just as "parallel construction" of the trades you were going to make based on insider information.
It's really interesting the kind of world you get when legal precedent is the only unstoppable force.
The ITC doesn't have the power to award monetary damages to Masimo for Apple's alleged infringement. For that, you need to go to court. The ITC is a specialized forum for trade disputes.
Masimo actually did sue Apple in Federal court for damages, but the judge declared a mistrial after the jury deadlocked 6-1 in favor of Apple.
The jury heard testimony related to patent infringement. It's true that Masimo chose to seek an award for unjust enrichment from trade secret theft instead of damages related to the patents themselves, but that was a strategic choice on their part. They could have requested damages in that same case.
Couldn’t same confidence could be said for Apple’s actions? Why continue to GTM with relatively minor feature (it’s not 2020 anymore where everyone was worrying about blood oxygen due to covid) that could be easily disabled by software? My sense is that Apple is really confident that they are not infringing on that patent.
Has Masimo stated what their proposed licensing fees would be? $10/watch, retroactively, seems like a reasonable deal. I bought my Apple Watch 6, specifically for that feature, even though I had a perfectly functional Apple Watch 3.
Honestly, all this tells me is no matter what big tech wins.
Have a great idea and patent it? Well who cares, they'll steal your tech and courts seemingly will let them. All comes down to who has the money for better lawyers.
These threads keep seeing the use of the word "steal" without any concrete evidence of actual IP theft. Violating a poorly conceived patent (measuring SOX with three or more lights on a watch) is not anything at all like industrial espionage.
the existence of a patent that another company copied is by definition stealing.
until further litigation occurs and changes this decision, it is a fact Apple stole this technology
why they can't ever show a little humility and pay up in royalties is just ridiculous. remember, they didn't even want to pay artists for the music they gave away when launching Apple Music until a Very Big Deal named Taylor Swift told them to GTFO.
First, IP infringement is not stealing. It’s different and equating them cheapens theft. We should speak accurately.
Second, many patents are stupid. One click checkout was stupid and companies that implemented one click purchasing weren’t infringing anything. And certainly weren’t stealing.
Was this patent stupid? I don’t know, maybe. But assuming stealing is not a very good idea as I expect there are many more BS patents than valid.
Having actually read the patent, as well as the sordid history behind Apple's dealings with Masimo, I'm not sure how someone could reasonably assert the patent was poorly conceived, or how they could poorly summarize the patent or the situation in the way you did.
Nevertheless, the patent was granted, and naked assertions and poor summarizations are not convincing enough to conclude that it should not have been. The contents of that patent, for anyone who is interested in examining it, make this seem like a pretty cut and dry case of patent infringement.
Even if Apple infringes on Masimo's patent, it's not "stealing" as is being constantly asserted in these threads. Just because anyone infringes on a patent doesn't mean any IP was misappropriated or anything was physically stolen.
I take issue with the conflating infringing on a patent and "stealing" IP. The two are not the same.
My reading of Masimo's patent is far less charitable than yours. To me it reads like one of those "but on a computer" type patents. It's not really all that novel but overworked USPTO reviewers grant them anyways.
Supposed sordid dealings by Apple are yet to be demonstrated by anything but unsubstantiated claims by Masimo. Not that Apple is above any wrongdoing but Masimo's executives are incentivized to act like overly aggrieved victims to extract sympathy from third parties.
My and the patent examiner's reading of the patent is far less charitable to Apple than yours, and I'm still at a loss as to how one can poorly summarize the patent to exclude the relevant and obvious details showing apparent infringement, but here we are.
Is there any evidence you feel would convince people that the patent examiner was wrong in awarding the patent which, at the moment, is valid?
Any evidence you feel convincingly disputes the record we have of Apple's interactions with Masimo? Empty denials would be pretty unconvincing, and I'm not sure we even have that.
There are a greater number who dispute that the earth is roundish. Their dispute, while not imaginary, doesn't mean they're right. In this case, the patent is visible for all to see its apparent validity, and it was judged valid by people who judge such things, so we can indeed assume the patent is valid, instead of the opposite, until equal or greater evidence surfaces to the contrary.
>Are you implying the patent examiner doesn't apply actual judgement or make actual judgments?
They might make "judgements" in the colloquial sense, but from a legal point of view they don't make the final call. It's not any different than a cop giving you a ticket for speeding. You're not guilty until convicted by a judge/jury.
> They might make "judgements" in the colloquial sense, but from a legal point of view they don't make the final call.
They may not make the final call, but they make judgements, and thus are people who judge such things. Importantly, they do so more than you, so their judgement outweighs yours alone.
And, it's actually the opposite of your analogy, because the patent, having been judged by a person who judges such things, is indeed valid unless convincingly proven otherwise.
Which leads us back on topic: is there any convincing evidence the patent is invalid? I'd like to move beyond your purely semantic meta-argument and back towards substance.
>They may not make the final call, but they make judgements, and thus are people who judge such things. Importantly, they do so more than you, so their judgement outweighs yours alone.
>And, it's actually the opposite of your analogy, because the patent, having been judged by a person who judges such things, is indeed valid unless convincingly proven otherwise.
The same could be said for a cop and/or prosecutor. Do you think someone being prosecuted for a crime is guilty "unless convincingly proven otherwise"?
> The same could be said for a cop and/or prosecutor. Do you think someone being prosecuted for a crime is guilty "unless convincingly proven otherwise"?
Of course not, which is precisely why your analogy fails. You seem to be confusing presumption of innocence in a crime, a thing which exists, with some sort of presumption of patent invalidity, a thing which doesn't exist. Thus, contrary to your latest claim, the same can't, in fact, be said of one and the other.
In the US, in the case of prosecution for a crime, someone is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Whereas the patent, having been judged valid and subsequently granted, continues to be valid until proven otherwise.
Which leads us back on topic: is there any convincing evidence the patent, currently judged valid, is actually invalid?
I asked you this already, and you responded with nothing, so if you respond again with nothing, it will look like you're just trying to argue, rather than discuss.
If they make the tech accessible for millions of people and improve reality, how is that a bad thing? I am confused. Unless you are too much emotionally caught up in the word "steal" and bunch of sentences.
Patents are a pragmatic contract between inventors and society:
- In order to be granted a patent, inventors must publish detailed descriptions of their inventions, including step-by-step instructions on how to re-create them. The inventions become public knowledge.
- In exchange for publishing the details of their inventions, society grants a temporary exclusive right to market the technology.
Without this system, the only way to safeguard a technological advantage would be to keep it secret. Inventors would be incentivized to maintain maximum secrecy for all new inventions. That would be bad for society, and inconvenient for inventors.
The patent system is an acknowledgement of this reality. Even though it seems a bit ridiculous, we allow people to claim temporary "ownership" of their new ideas, in order to incentivize the publishing of research, which eventually enters the public domain.
Clearly, there's some room for argument on the details of this specific case, but assuming the patent is legitimate, and that Apple infringed on it, then it would be bad for the long-term progress of science for us to let them get away with it.
> Without this system, the only way to safeguard a technological advantage would be to keep it secret. Inventors would be incentivized to maintain maximum secrecy for all new inventions. That would be bad for society, and inconvenient for inventors.
And in today's world where reversing a product is pretty much a guarantee if the product is something anyone wants, the secret won't be kept for too long. (shhh, everyone's secret sauce is pretty much thousand island) Once the secret is out, anyone that wants to will copy it and now there's no protection.
Ya, clearly patents are a good deal for inventors. I just think a lot of people fail to realize that it's also a good deal for society.
Without patents, who knows how many ideas would be stuck in the heads of individual people, reluctant not only to try to bring them to market, but to even discuss them with anybody. Why would anybody want to become an inventor, if there were so little upside?
to be fair, it's harder and harder to come up with an idea first. there's a lot of patents that have to be researched to see if your idea is first or just a first^Nth person to have the idea. that's a definite specialty skill and even then they're not perfect
The problem is many patents are incomplete, they don't actually contain step by step recreation instructions and it's especially problematic in the sciences fields.
The other issue is there are patents on ideas that aren't novel. There was some tightening of the rules such as the Alice software ruling but still lots of holes.
Case in point personally, our competitor patented the "idea" of putting a flexible PCB in a type of product. That's how bullshit it was and that was granted in 2020. Luckily we have prior art of a flexible PCB in a product of ours from 17years ago if they decide to ever start shit.
I bet there are lots of small time inventors that lack the capital to setup a worldwide manufacturing and distribution infrastructure right off the bat that may disagree with you.
Apart from those words, is there anything else you think is of concern compared to the progress made by humanity by making the tech available to millions of people?
Apple's argument was that it was being irreparably harmed by having to take the Watch off the market. Not for lost sales, which are reparable by handing money to Apple, but for the reputation / goodwill cost of consumers being exposed to the turmoil. (There's established case law that this does count as irreparable, so the main question would be whether they're really being harmed in that way.)