Apple is halting sales of its watch because of a finding that it violated some patents:
The case revolves around medical-technology company Masimo, which alleged in a 2021 complaint that Apple violated its patents related to measuring blood-oxygen levels. Apple has included a sensor, called a pulse oximeter, in most new models of the Apple Watch since 2020.
I'm not surprised. Apple's corporate philosophy seems to be that other people have violated their patents and gotten away with it, so by God they're going to do it too. Needless to say, this attitude carries some risks.
Some of these patents are overly broad and should not have been issued, but whatchagonnado...
Yeah, patents are a cluster-eff in the US.
Agreed. The majority of the patent claims were properly thrown out already and I honestly don't think any claims that remain are any less obvious to someone familiar with pulse oximeters and also watches.
The problem is that all of this stuff is spread across so many agencies. It shouldn't be 3 different organizations that decides whether the patents are invalid, whether they were infringed, and whether the proper remedy is an import ban, but that's the world we live in.
As of a few minutes ago the Apple web site was happy to sell me a brand new Series 9 Apple watch.
The dates are that Apple will stop selling from its web site on I think Dec 21, and from physical Apple Stores on Dec 24.
I have no idea what determined those dates.
It’s beginning to look a lot like lawsuit.
Everywhere you go…
This comment is beneath you, Kevin.
Individuals and families mostly work out their differences by talking to each other (and perhaps seething in resentment for years).
Small/mid businesses are involved in a constant stream of disagreements that occasionally result in litigation, more often in mutual exhaustion and dropping the issue.
But the biggest companies get every disagreement of every sort aired in public. This doesn't mean they are more (or less) immoral, just that every journalist in the world wants to cover them.
You have no evidence and no real reason to make the claim you made about Apple. You could equally make such a claim about Qualcomm. Or Intel. Or nVidia. Or ...
The record shows that plenty of Apple lawsuits have been judged to Apple's favor. eg WARF
Others have not. More so than other large companies? I have no idea, do you?
Apple won against EPIC, Google lost. Does that tell us anything useful about moral stances and tribal affiliation? Does it tell us anything that's not very technical details about exactly how one contract was structured vs another?
(Yeah, yeah, I know EPIC was not patents. But it's recent.
Patents WAS WARF, and Apple won while Intel lost.
Did Apple deserve, technically, to win. I think so, but WARF might believe the patent was on the general idea of load/store aliasing, not the details of Store Set implementation?
Did Intel deserve to lose? I have no idea, don't know how their implementation works.
Was either decided by a team of qualified engineers skilled in the art? Don't make laugh...)
I think you have been seriously involved in enough patent (or at least contractual disagreement) lawsuits to know just how stupid they become, how they land up hinging on some pathetic minor point that is of zero engineering interest but is explainable to a jury.
Leave peanut-gallery commentary of issues where you don't know the tech (or legal) details to the idiots. You can do a lot better commenting on issues where you do have a comparative advantage.
I guess you're heavily invested in Apple?
No, it's just a fair point that high-profile companies get more print because they're high profile, not because the underlying data says they're worse or better.
Tesla fires get more airtime even though they have the least - it goes unmentioned this is possibly because they have the least, etc.
how about making a watch that just tells time?
Why? You've got a phone. And even if you don't, the world is full of clocks. I haven't owned a watch since 1981.
Violating each other's patents is standard for the business. A main reason for seeking patents in this area is defensive so the other guy can't sue you without losing their own business. Ten years ago it was estimated that there were about a thousand patents applicable to a cellphone and it's impossible to pre-identify and negotiate them all. What we really need is a universal license system like for some copyrighted works.
All so incredibly childish. "If they can do it, we can too" Grow up business and learn to follow the laws.
These aren't, like, clear laws,
They're more like, 'oh, by the way, we patented the idea of putting an app that connects to a pulse oximeter.'
Read this instead; it explains things better. But if you don't have a WSJ subscription and (for some reason) you absolutely want to read what they wrote, you can always read it (legally) for free here.
I like Microsoft Start. I follow lots of sites and get articles I would otherwise have to pay for.
I think it is more accurate to say that Apple's philosophy is that no one else has patents.