Masimo CEO Joe Kiani, waging a legal fight with Apple over a blood oxygen (pulse oximetry) feature, said that consumers are better off without Apple’s version of the technology.
Mark Gurman and Edward Ludlow for Bloomberg News:
The remarks followed Apple’s decision to cease sales of smartwatches Thursday that had the tool — a gauge of blood oxygen saturation known as a pulse oximeter — which had been a heavily marketed health feature on the devices. The move stemmed from a ruling by the US International Trade Commission that found the technology violated Masimo patents.
See also: Apple wins as patent tribunal decision upheld, Masimo loses appeal – January 12, 2024
Customers should buy pulse oximeters from Masimo or others instead, Kiani said in an interview Thursday on Bloomberg TV. “Apple is masquerading what they are offering to consumers as a reliable, medical pulse oximeter, even though it is not,” he said. “I really feel wholeheartedly that consumers are better off without it.”
Apple didn’t have an immediate comment on Kiani’s remarks. After a US federal appeals court denied Apple a reprieve, the company began selling tweaked versions of its Series 9 and Ultra 2 watches Thursday without the blood oxygen feature. Apple said it strongly disagrees with the court’s decision and is appealing the ITC ban…
Masimo’s CEO said he hasn’t spoken to Apple personally about a settlement, and that nobody from Apple has reached out about coming to an agreement.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote Tuesday, “Very few consumers buy an Apple Watch for blood-oxygen sensing. It’s a nice-to-have feature that is not crucial to Apple Watch sales in any meaningful way.”
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Masimo doesn’t understand the game Apple is playing. I’m sure they are close to their own non-patent infringing solution and Apple will not have to pay anything to implement it. If Masimo was smart, they should settle for whatever Apple is offering.
Not to mention the “Streisand effect” he is likely causing. People actually WANT Apple watches, and LIKE Apple. When guys and companies like this pull this kind of stuff, there is usually a backlash in the public.
Masimo said on record no one from Apple is reaching out to talk, so Apple is offering NOTHING you have it the other way way around…
So he claims that Apple is violating his patents and the Apple Watch so unreliable that users should buy a device from Masimo instead. He is undermining his case on the patents. Either Masimo’s products don’t actually work or they are significantly different than what Apple is shipping. Which in turn infers that Apple is not violating Masimo’s patents.
How does implementing a patent poorly reduce any case of infringement?
In order to implement something that does not work in the same manner of the implementation that has been patented it has to inherently been implemented differently in some manner. Thus it is not the same implementation as that which has been patented. Thus there should be no claim of patent violation.
Not even wrong!
Isn’t the entire point of a patent that you register the implementation of an idea? Which means that the patent covers the method of implementation not the resulting ‘product’ of that implementation. So, if you are found to be infringing it legally goes to say you implemented it in such a similar way that it was arguably identical and worth bringing up a court case regardless of how well or poorly the implementation was able to result in the ‘product’.
In short, I agree with you that should Apple have implemented the ‘product’ differently in some manner there is no case. However, there is an active claim, so I suspect that the implementation was deemed so similar that the case was brought to court.
implies, not infers
This is quite the evil comment by Masimo