Apple halts sales of the Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Ultra 2 in its online store ahe...
As it promised, Apple no longer sells the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra via its online store in the US -- and time is running out to get them at brick and mortar Apple Stores, too.
Apple Watch Series 9 (left) and Apple Watch Ultra (right)
Apple has suspended online sales of the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 in the United States ahead of the upcoming import ban. The ban will go into full effect on December 25 thanks to a ruling by the International Trade Commission (ITC) in a patent infringement case involving med-tech company Masimo.
In the last 10 minutes, the Apple Watch page shifted from the Series 9 being on the top, to the Apple Watch SE. The Series 9 and Ultra parts of the page now say "currently unavailable."
While Apple has halted sales of the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 in the US, it's important to note that other retailers, such as Walmart and Best Buy, are still allowed to sell any existing stock they hold even after the December 25 deadline. Additionally, the upcoming ban does not place any restrictions on resales.
In 2020, Masimo filed a lawsuit against Apple with the U.S. District Court. The lawsuit claimed that Apple had stolen trade secrets and violated patents with the blood pulse oximeter included in the Apple Watch. This was later followed up by a filing with the ITC in 2021.
While the District Court trial ended in a mistrial and didn't resume, the ITC ruled in favor of Masimo in January 2023.
If left uncontested, the Apple Watch import ban will theoretically last until the patent expires in August 2028.
The dispute has led to an import ban on models that feature the blood pulse oximeter, but other models, like the Apple Watch SE, will not be affected. While the import ban will start on Christmas day, Apple will end sales of the Apple Watch in brick-and-mortar Apple Stores on Christmas Eve -- December 24.
Apple had requested that the import ban on Apple Watch be delayed until the appeals can be processed. However, the US ITC has rejected that request.
Whether or not the ban will take a toll on Apple is a bit of a contentious subject. Some believe the ban could cause a loss of approximately $300-400 million in Apple's sales during the holiday season. However, this amount is comparatively small for Apple, considering the anticipated total sales of nearly $120 billion for the October-December quarter.
However, others are concerned that, if left unchecked, the ban could cause substantial problems for Apple in the 2024 fiscal year.
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Comments
Are you saying that Masimo is a patent troll,
or that their patent is invalid,
or that the US ITC has erred,
or that you planned to buy the watch but now had your xmas ruined,
or that you own Apple stocks and are now biting your nails?
I’m having a hard problem understanding the definition of BS in this context.
As a retired physician, so many of my patients and colleagues were using Apple Watch and specifically the pulse oximeter to monitor their health, especially my pulmonary patients with COPD & ILD. And my father when he was in hospice. It was critical for letting individuals know if they needed to seek medical help when they were in the throes of COVID in the beginning and middle of the pandemic as another example.
There is real harm to this. I just hope at the end of the day this is just put through arbitration and if Apple is violating Masimo patents, there is a FRAND settlement so both companies can just get on with their lives.
Even if Masimo has aspirations to make a health watch, I guarantee you that Apple will be looking for an opportunity to counter sue for any thing that resembles an Apple Watch.
So yeah BS.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/10/21/apple-files-retaliatory-suits-against-firm-trying-to-ban-apple-watch
* Biden signs the waiver of his own accord.
* Apple influences Biden to sign the waiver (perhaps via a large campaign contribution now allowed in the wake of Citizens United.)
* Apple redesigns the S9 and U2.
* Apple abandons the S9 and U2 and is already hard at work bringing an S10 and U3 to market that don't violate Masimo's patents.
* Apple successfully challenges the patents with the USTO.
* Apple only sells the Watch SE until August 2028.
* Apple buys Masimo (or a controlling stake).
* Apple successfully gets Masimo's watch taken off the market, thereby giving them a bargaining chip to get their own back on the market.
* Apple licenses Masimo's technology for an unreasonable price.
* Apple initiates and wins a FRAND suit that forces Masimo to license the technology to Apple at a reasonable price.
Obviously some of these are far more likely than others, but you can't deny that nobody really knows what the outcome will be.
What Apple did is your basic business practice for a large company trying to enter some market, or any company from startup to a century old business. They find some company to buy or merge with if they have the cash. If not, they build a team by hiring people. The experts in the field are at the incumbent companies. There is no other path a company can take if they want to do anything at speed.
I can do a quite negative take on Masimo's CEO. He is suggesting that Apple is stealing Masimo's property by hiring away its employees. That's basically indentured servitude, and I could go worse here, as the employees are absolutely free to get another job doing the same thing. Their engineering talent does not belong to Masimo and they really should take another job if those talents bring them opportunities.
Apple is absolutely doing the necessary and correct thing by hiring experts in the field to design and engineer some feature or product. This is not stealing. It's doing the right thing. You do not want them or any other company to do it any other way. I don't think there is any other way.
There is no such thing as "good faith" in business practices. You should really be skeptical of any takes that says Apple was going to buy Masimo in 2013 or 2014. They do not take on businesses that have little to do with their line of business, and that line of business isn't medical devices. There could have been anything from an IP deal to a component supply deal (skeptical of this), but Masimo itself and its product line? No way.
Like I said before. Nothing was stolen. Apple likely put more engineering work into the blood oxygen measurement parts of the Apple Watch than Masimo has in the past 20 years. It took them 6 years to get it into an Apple Watch. You could go out and buy a blood oxygen finger clamp for $20. You don't spend 6 years to add these measurement as these finger clamp ones have been available for a very long time now.
Poaching employees happens all the time and is generally legal within the confines of any agreements said employees may have agreed to. Stealing intellectual property is not legal. If the employees bring trade secrets that their former company owns with them then they are participating in intellectual property theft. This is an established fact of law, whether you agree or not and has be the basis if innumerable lawsuits in the past.
Good faith negotiations, while less clear cut, are also a defined concept. Whether you believe in them or not, the courts do.
Finally, “nothing was stolen?” You’re wrong here, too, and the courts have ruled.
You may disagree but you have to explain why you are more of an authority on the topic than the actual authorities.
There are separate court cases, before the ITC case, where Masimo accused Apple of infringing their patents. The initial Masimo vs Apple patent trial ended up in a hung jury, with the jury voting 6-1 for Apple and several claims being dismissed. It was a mistrial because it wasn't unanimous. Apple effectively won that as the result furthers the appeals process with more of an uphill case for Masimo. Apple believes they can invalidate the patents or say they don't violate them based on them. The appeals process is ongoing.
The ITC must interpret violations of patents not whether it invalid or not, and as everyone should know, patents in modern times don't describe anything, don't reveal any actionable information, and are only useful as tools to sue other companies. Just read them. They don't say anything specific. The commission and the judges are all very well versed in this yes, but it's kind of like ruling based on crappy laws. They know the patent sucks, the whole process is built on a house of cards, but they will do it as it's their job.
And yes, these juries and judges are people just like you and I. We can determine if something is good or not just as well as they. The difference is they know the process and boundaries, but that judgement of a good or bad patent, our opinion is just as good as theirs. Likely better because we are not bound by direction and history. Heck, many of these infringement cases rely on juries. A literal pool of people filtered out from a semi-randomly chosen set of people.