Apple Fights Back: Urges Court to Reverse Ban on Oxygen-Tracking Apple Watch
Apple's legal team just unsheathed its swords—demanding a federal court overturn the controversial ban on its blood-oxygen sensing smartwatches. The move comes after regulators claimed the feature violated medical device patents. No compromises, no apologies—just Silicon Valley’s favorite trillion-dollar toddler throwing a legal tantrum.
Why This Matters
This isn’t just about wristwear. It’s a power play in the wearables arms race—where health-tracking features have become the new battleground for tech giants. Lose this fight, and Apple watches might start looking as useless as a Wall Street analyst’s price prediction.
What’s Next
The court’s decision could set a precedent for how aggressively tech companies can muscle into regulated health tech territory. Either way, Tim Cook’s lawyers will bill enough hours to buy a small country’s GDP in Bitcoin.
Masimo defends its patent victory
Masimo, a California-based medical technology company, has accused Apple of using unfair practices to gain an edge in the emerging market for health-related wearable devices for years.
Apple was in talks with Masimo in 2013 to collaborate on health monitoring features. Still, instead of coming to terms with it, Apple reportedly snapped up some of Masimo’s staff and brought Masimo’s pulse oximetry technology in-house, Masimo says.
Masimo introduced its smartwatch, the W1, in 2022 after Apple introduced its models with blood-oxygen tracking. However, Masimo insists that its intellectual property was violated months before the W1 was released. Two years later, the ITC sided with Masimo in a decision that Apple violated its patents.
In late December 2023, the ruling resulted in a brief cessation of Apple’s ability to sell its most current watch series in the US. Apple promptly requested a temporary block on the ban, allowing it to continue sales. However, the court reinstated the ban in January 2024, prompting Apple to strip the blood-oxygen-sensor feature from the models in question in the US.
Masimo’s attorney, Joseph Re of Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear, said the ITC ruling was justified. He argued that Apple was trying to rewrite the law by claiming that a final, market-ready product must exist to enforce a patent violation. He added that this was not how patent protection works.
Judges scrutinize fairness of the ITC ruling
At an appeals court, a three-judge panel indicated a strong interest in the timing of events. At the heart of the preliminary investigation was whether Masimo had a product with adequate standing to trigger the ITC’s trade-related enforcement capabilities in 2021.
Apple had argued the ban was unjustified because Masimo possessed only prototypes at that point. Apple argues that the ITC’s trade protection rules are intended to stop unfair competition with real products, not ideas that aren’t real yet.
Masimo pushed back, contending that its domestically produced rival was sufficiently advanced that there wasn’t even close to what the statute calls an “end product” and that the agency doesn’t need a finished product for it to act. The judges did not rule immediately, but they hammered both sides with rapid-fire questions about product readiness, patent rights, and how to balance protecting innovation and encouraging consumer access.
The court’s ultimate decision could create an important precedent for resolving patent disputes when emerging technologies coincide. Should the court rule in Apple’s favor, it could hamper the ability of companies like Masimo to wield the ITC to block imports of partially developed devices. If the ban is upheld, tech companies may have to reconsider how they strike partnerships and leverage the innovation of third parties.
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