I'm sure patents have a place in the modern world, but I rarely see a case where they are being used as intended - more often than not, it's as I said above : a measure of who from a bunch of peers who "invented" the same thing at the same time made their submission to a patent office first with the goal of squelching competition or building revenue streams via licensing. Basically, scummy practices abusing the system. Apple certainly is not innocent in this regard - I hate it when they play this game just as much as I hate it when others do too.
"The ITC's ruling upholds a January ruling that found that the Apple Watch infringed on a Masimo patent. The exclusion period recommended on Thursday is supposed to go into effect after 60 days, during which time President Joe Biden can overturn the ruling. Biden previously declined to veto an ITC ruling that found the Apple Watch violated patents of a different company, AliveCor."
"Masimo has accused Apple of entering discussions with it for a potential partnership, including a potential acquisition, in 2013, only to steal Masimo's idea and poach some of Masimo's engineers to implement it."
"As noted by Reuters, Apple and Masimo's legal battles are ongoing. In May, Masimo's lawsuit against Apple in California federal court ended in a mistrial, and Apple has also sued Masimo in Delaware. Flipping the script, Apple has accused [PDF] Masimo's W1 smartwatches of violating Apple Watch patents."
"Meanwhile, Apple is also in an Apple Watch patent battle with California-based AliveCor. AliveCor is currently appealing the revocation of three patents that it claims the Apple Watch infringes upon. Before then, the ITC ruled that the Apple Watch infringes [PDF] on electrocardiogram sensor-related patents. But there's no import ban in effect because the US Patent and Trademark Office revoked the patents in question. Like Masimo, AliveCor has accused Apple of initiating a potential partnership but ultimately poaching AliveCor workers and infringing on its patents instead."
Looks like the patent lawyers are going to do well...
https://9to5mac.com/2023/12/18/apple-halting-apple-watch-ser...
> In a statement to 9to5Mac, Apple has announced that it will soon halt sales of its flagship Apple Watch models in the United States.
> The Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 will no longer be available to purchase from Apple starting later this week.
And https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/18/tech/apple-halt-sales-apple-w... cleverly paired the story with a file photo of people lining up outside an Apple Store.
> The company confirmed to CNN it will no longer be selling its Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2, starting Thursday on Apple.com and from retail locations after December 24.
Get more people captive shoppers in their brick&morder stores during the shopping frenzy.
> In October, the International Trade Commission ruled that Apple was in violation of Masimo’s pulse oximeter patent, which uses light-based technology to read blood-oxygen levels. President Biden has 60 days to review the ruling before a ban could go into effect.
> “While the review period will not end until December 25, Apple is preemptively taking steps to comply should the ruling stand,” the company said in a statement.
It's nice for review of the ruling to drag its feet until after the Christmas shopping period.
With the news hype, Apple might even come out ahead?
“Oh it’s a shame we have to shut sales off. But don’t worry, it’ll still be available until we can’t guarantee before-Christmas shipping.”
They’ll have a solution worked out by the beginning of Jan.
I mean obviously for now it makes more sense for them to wait and hope they win on appeal or get the import ban veto'd, but if it actually comes down to not being able to sell the device, surely the lost revenue would exceed the licensing cost?
Assuming a spherical cow, and that Apple's decision-makers aren't completely incapable of basic math, the logical conclusion would be...?
(Spoiler: I assume the patent-holder is asking some outrageous sum. Or there's a piece of the story we're missing. Or maybe some kind of game of chicken.)
Indeed, Apple has a reputation for going scorched earth on patent trolls and trying to invalidate your entire patent portfolio after you poke the bear (Masimo has already had several of their patents invalidated in the course of their litigation with Apple).
> “If they don’t want to use our chip, I’ll work with them to make their product good,” Mr. Kiani said. “Once it’s good enough, I’m happy to give them a license.”
2) Because they're appealing the ruling, and
3) They're hoping POTUS might drag their ass out of the fire like Obama did in 2013.
TL;DR: the blood oxygen sensor is patent encumbered somehow.
Though it feels like an oversight to me. In this field, like in telecom modems, patents mean a lot, so I also wonder why didn't Apple seek to buy out the consumer part of Masimo along with their patent portfolio. Maybe they did the math and saw that fighting Masimo later in court over their patents is still cheaper.
- loss of sales of watches
- either battling in court for who knows how long or settling out of court for god knows how much money.
The real move would have been to just.. Grow a team internally. I mean come on, ox sensors? They couldn't have figured that out without poaching a well established med-tech company?
Why wouldn't they want to enter the the gym space at the least?
would have been better to see a criminal like jobs behind bars. Sadly they never found the courage
Hope cook goes
PS: Was all set with an app design for the Samsung devices a few years ago, but Tizen turned out to be not worthy of any mindshare and I don’t support Google’s surveillance capitalism business model (so no WearOS for me). Meanwhile, Apple doesn’t have a well known procedure for vetting app developers enough to trust some with full access to their crypto-locked devices. With no other similar platforms, there is no real opportunity to advance mankind in this regard at this time anyway…but dang, love those Activity reminders /not
It’s supposed to protect first movers, not randos who show up 10 years later and demand cash.
Not that I use the feature all that often, but if I did, I guess it would be time to turn off automatic updates until it gets sorted.
TFA is extremely light on details, given that Apple is effectively ordering a stop-ship on their hardware. Was there an attempt at negotiation? If so, that failed because...? If not, why didn't that happen? Apple has a bit of cash, but their pockets aren't infinitely deep; was Masimo asking too much?
Interesting take
Furthermore, is there any way to do anything without infringing on any patent ?
The patent system is really outdated, it's good for lazy people who want to live off royalties, but for end-customers and innovation, this is really bad.
(and it does a bad job at preventing foreign companies to launch clones)
Assuming those two statements to be true, what's your point?
EDIT: and I see parent pulled a ninja edit. Stay classy.
However, seeing this happen to Apple is a bit of schadenfreude, this is the company that filed lawsuits for smartphones having rounded corners.
EDIT: And to be clear, this isn’t a case of just having to pay the people who developed the tech for a license. The patent trolls who hold the license aren’t willing to sell Apple a license, unless Apple switches to use their hardware or partner with them to work on Apple’s hardware. There is no excuse. Markets can’t work when governments grant arbitrary legal monopolies on ideas like this.
You can’t invent anything or push something to market without stepping on at least 1 or more vague patents.
I'm also usually strongly against patents, especially for software, but I think your characterization is completely off base here.
The company produces and sells watches with the technology. It's not a patent troll.
Technology that’s been around since the 30’s and has been put in many other devices including other fitness devices. Putting something in watch form is hardly innovation.
This IS NOT A PATENT TROLL. Please don't water down our language by lumping all patent licensors in with patent trolls. The phrase was created with a purpose in mind and you're harming that with your use.
But intellectual property goes way too far.
Literally a few days ago everyone here was telling us how important it is for beeper to stop working because they’re copying Apple.
When is copying and modifications okay and when is it not?
the company is being particular about how they want to get paid, maybe thats the anticompetitive practice that the government shouldnt be granting an exemption for
there are examples of the government mediating sells such as during bank failures
Doesn't sound like they accidentally stepped on a vague patent to me.
What is this? Are they some form of slaves? If company doesn't want its employees "poached" they should pay them enough money so they don't think of "switching sides".
This notion that corporations can own people and their brains should stop.
(I don't think patents need to be entirely eliminated, but they need drastic reform. The patent system should be an incentive to small inventors, not a pay-to-play shield for big corporations. Obviously eliminating software/algorithm patents, eliminating "thing but with a computer" patents, shortening the entitlement period, mandating FRAND with full transparency around licensing fees, possibly even capping lifetime license fee revenue at $100m or so.)
Perhaps a page with business logic is needed. What you expect from the patent, what a license will cost, what roi they expect per unit sold. If the intend is to either exploit the patent themselves, have others do it or some combination of the two. (rule out patents intended to hinder development) A description of the effort and expertise it took to develop the application.
Perhaps one should submit a product for review and have the patent office list relevant patents along with the bill and/or contract. Like a modular system with a single check out. Add a 10-20% fee in case the patent office makes a mistake so that patent holders can still be paid. That would make sure the patent office would make an effort towards realistic fees.
Just some dumb ideas I came up with just now, I'm sure others have much better ideas for improvements.
Sure, but Apple has made an entire business out of making lowball offers to companies that produce tech they want. Then offering to pay more if they can just get more data on the tech, before ultimately pulling out of negotiations entirely and just copying that tech whether through internal resources, or hiring resources from the company in question.
They've decided it's cheaper to steal and then fight in court than to pay a fair market rate. Honestly given this has happened at least 10 times that I can recall off the top of my head, the Justice Department should be dropping a 50lbs sledgehammer of justice on them. At this point it's intentional and not just illegal but morally reprehensible.
Correct way would be to force Apple to split into separate independent entities. This should apply to all other businesses too big to fail.
Would you be willing to invest your own savings into tech-centric startups if they wouldn't be able to legally defend the tech they invented?
Capitalism is a few centuries old. Statistically speaking it's most likely not the economic system we end up with forever. Optimizing for innovation under that constraint only seems premature. To channel Le Guin:
"We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words."
It is working exactly as designed.
Strict enforcement of patent laws ensures that capital will be invested in innovation.
If capital was allocated democratically rather than at the whim of companies (that end up chasing taxpayer subsidies anyways... SpaceX, Tesla, etc.) you wouldn't need to strictly enforce patent law. The risk is already being assumed mostly by the government for truly bleeding edge research. What we have in practice is a system where the cost is socialized and the benefit is privatized.
Considering most of my issues with patents is around trivial software patents and the abhorrent practice of slightly modifying a formula (coupled with paying generic manufacturers to not produce) to effectively extend the usable lifetime of a drug patent, if anything, it's the West that needs to change to make patents be actually good for innovation and not just a means to throttle competition.
I mean would fucking North Korea be a heaven of innovation if only they more strictly policed IP law??
We're still waiting for Peloton to be profitable. Since Apple's fitness customers already have Apple hardware, they might as well sell you their own version of the service Peloton provides without occurring the expense of producing Peloton-equivalent hardware.
Yes and they would still be protected by those silly patents no matter who Apple hired
Taxation is, of course, theft, and any of it's use unethical — but I don't think this has anything to do with my question, which you haven't really answered. I wasn't asking about subsidising or donating either, my question was specifically about investment: act that assumes you expect the returns.
if they finally stop extending it...
It's fairly specific about an arrangement of sensors with specific capabilities.
Do you have data on this? I think it's a pretty big deal.
Uses of pulse oximetry: https://www.healthline.com/health/pulse-oximetry#purpose-and...
Most of the above conditions listed above occur in very sick people already under close medical supervision, with the exception of asthma. But even in asthma, pulse oximetry has limitations: https://asthma.net/living/lets-talk-pulse-oximetry
I think it’s cool the Apple Watch has this, but it’s mostly a gimmick as far as I can tell.
On the non-medical side, I fly small, unpressurized airplanes and altitude can definitely have an effect on blood oxygen levels. Having this data collected in the background as I fly or do other activities is valuable to me despite not having any of the issues presented from the link above.
https://www.usitc.gov/system/files?file=secretary/fed_reg_no...
When it was conceived, it may have been a worthy system solving a real problem. But today, it's hard to argue that without the patent system we'd lose out on any innovation. Given the population size and the ease at which it takes to come up with and validate an idea, twenty five years now is an eternity. Do you seriously think that no one would have come up with this particular idea if there were no patent system? I'd argue, that even without copying any idea, this sort of thing would be independently "discovered" many many times within 25 years.
Why should we reward the first person with the money to get the patent? Why should we not instead reward the first to market? Is not being the first to market already a reward?
I'm firmly in the camp that ideas are dime a dozen, and the value is in the implementation/verification of them not in simply writing down a vague notion. The patent system rewards the latter and doesn't even require demonstrating a working prototype, let alone a viable product! It's rewarding the wrong thing.
Apple vs Epic and Google vs Epic comes to mind.
So it’s your position that there is a way to do this without violating the patent, and Apple has chosen to be lazy and not pursue it?
> I like trademarks which disallow other companies than Apple from selling products called “Apple Watch” or other companies than Samsung from selling “Samsung Galaxy S” series phones.
Why? It only serves companies to help them become larger companies. If you think it helps customers understand what they're buying, consider: customers are basically oblivious to what they are buying when it comes to technology. If that's actually the problem you want to solve, the solutiom to that is "technology nutrition facts" and spec sheets by law, not trademark.
> And I like that if I make a piece of music or some art or whatever, some giant company can’t just grab that and use it for profit without making some arrangement with me.
What're you going to do about it if they do? Sue Disney? Doesn't seem like you'll get a lot out of that.
Bonus points for additionally eliminating propriety software at the same time.
That's fair. You can have all of that without trademark or copyright though.
> a product carrying the name and logo of the product I wanna buy is the product I wanna buy.
Lots of products can carry the name and logo of the product you want to buy without trademark :)
Maybe there is something besides the logo that you're more interested in?
This is endemic though, I don't think Masimo is especially unique here, companies often encourage filing frivolous patents.
If we going that route, we might be bringing back slavery by the backdoor.
The Masimo case should have been thrown out.
Just imagine you are an engineer with amazing and unique skillset but you were unfortunate enough to pick wrong employer. You get a new offer from someone who sees your potential and could give you tools you need to help you do what you love.
With this kind of precedent, companies won't touch you with a barge pole even if you ticked all the boxes and you really don't want to work where you are.
It's bad for workers and for progress in general.
Hiring a team and rebuilding something that is not patented, or that skirts the edge of a patent, that's just fine. Hiring the team and building the patented thing is bad, not because of hiring the team, but because of building the patented thing. That it's the same team is just evidence that it infringes on the patent.
Sorry, nothing was forcibly publicly disclosed here. These guys got patent protection, the public got nothing.
I don't particularly think so. Patents are meant for a person of "ordinary skill" in the art. I don't make these devices. I'm not a person equipped to offer an opinion on whether the patent discloses sufficient information.
>Sorry, nothing was forcibly publicly disclosed here. These guys got patent protection, the public got nothing.
The way the invention works is what is disclosed. Patents aren't blueprints. It's even more ridiculous that you are making this comment when Apple seems to have infringed.
I have not had to act on the data yet but if I were to get a low O2 alert while flying I would definitely open a window and descend ASAP. Depending on the circumstances I might also consider landing.
Generally speaking, the patents should describe the invention in such a way that anyone competent in the field could recreate it. So I don't see how the fact the Apple has hired that team has any relevance to this.
Maybe the patents should have been invalidated too.
Perhaps I don't know the basic dynamics of patent litigation. You're an expert, could you enlighten me?
Yeah, FRAND is pro-big business. It removes the upper limit on damages, i.e. minimizes the risk a business faces by infringing, which therefore minimizes any incentive to license a patent. It also reduces the incentive for a patentee to enforce their patent, as it takes ~$2-3m to litigate against a company like Apple through trial (not even appeals). Because of the upfront costs to enforcement, any small-time inventor is going to need a financier to back their case.
>Your line of argumentation seems specious.
My argument seems specious? You keep saying compliance... compliance with what? you haven't even made an argument, you just associate a few buzzwords and say "thing bad". You haven't explained anyway how FRAND and "compliance" are pro-small time inventor.
And yeah, I’m using the word compliance in the straightforward, obvious way. If that’s a problem for you, I don’t think this discussion is ever going to be useful.
Think about it. If legislation can make FRAND mandatory, it can also make the penalties sufficiently unfavourable to large corporations. Perhaps, and I’m just spitballing here, back pay for non-compliance could have a defined multiplier. Then there could be an additional multiplier for non-compliance after the date a complaint is made by the patent holder. And a further additional multiplier for non-compliance if the corporation has revenues over $100 million annually.
That’s literally the first idea that came to my dumbass ignorant head and I’m sure there’s a dozen much better ones out there. The key point is that the system can be built in such a way that a patent holder doesn’t need a team of lawyers with clever tricks to be entitled to favourable outcomes. Standardise it all and you reduce the dynamic range of advantage between parties of different size.
Entitlement?
I'm a patent litigator - nobody uses the word compliance in this field. It's not me that is making this conversation difficult. It's your apparent ignorance and obtuseness.
> Think about it. If legislation can make FRAND mandatory, it can also make the penalties sufficiently unfavourable to large corporations
Do you even know what FRAND stands for? Is this a joke?
>Perhaps, and I’m just spitballing here, back pay for non-compliance could have a defined multiplier. Then there could be an additional multiplier for non-compliance after the date a complaint is made by the patent holder. And a further additional multiplier for non-compliance if the corporation has revenues over $100 million annually.
Compliance WITH WHAT???
>The key point is that the system can be built in such a way that a patent holder doesn’t need a team of lawyers with clever tricks to be entitled to favourable outcomes.
Patentees don't need clever tricks, they just need to prove infringement. That's the only hard part. You skip past that entirely. I think that's what you mean by compliance, but you don't seem to have any idea how any of this actually works. Which is bizarre considering you are offering recommendations on how to improve something that you do not understand.
With the licensing of patents? Duh?
> I'm a patent litigator
Ah. I'm reminded of the famous quote — "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Community discussions are wher you talk with other people, not to win on a technicality in a courtroom.
> nobody uses the word compliance in this field
I'm sorry that the word compliance isn't sufficiently in-group for you. Perhaps tell people that you want to gate-keep rather than discuss, as it'll save other people a lot of time.
Licensing isn't a compliance matter. There's no enforcement entity. It's all just civil litigation and party's deciding things on their own.
>Ah. I'm reminded of the famous quote — "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Community discussions are wher you talk with other people, not to win on a technicality in a courtroom.
I'm not trying to win on a technicality here, all I did was explain to you that your understanding of patent incentives was wrong and based on incorrect facts.
>I'm sorry that the word compliance isn't sufficiently in-group for you. Perhaps tell people that you want to gate-keep rather than discuss, as it'll save other people a lot of time.
It's not that it isn't sufficiently in group, it's that it is without meaning in this context.
> Perhaps tell people that you want to gate-keep rather than discuss, as it'll save other people a lot of time.
I've been engaging in discourse with you. You refuse to come to the table and recognize what's actually going on, just repeating yourself and your misunderstandings.
>Ah. I'm reminded of the famous quote — "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
You have no idea what you are talking about. I'm plaintiff side. Anything pro small-inventor would be for my own benefit. Getting my client a license is preferable to trial. The thing is, the big companies never want to license because they can just force me to have to take them to trial, where we risk losing, or losing on appeal. You'd behove yourself to actually attempt to grok at least one of my posts instead of just typing "but compliance"
It literally is. I'm sorry that you can't English. I'm out.
Worth to note that is not just some obscure small company coming out of nowhere to capitalize from Apple. Masimo is a decades-old medical equipment company, with several developments and patents for non-invasive PPG. Apple is obviously well-aware of their developments, and was in touch with them already in 2013, more than a year before the launch of the Apple Watch.
From the actual lawsuit filed by Masimo in 2020 [1]:
"In 2013, Apple contacted Masimo and asked to meet regarding a potential collaboration. Apple told Masimo that Apple would like to understand more about Masimo’s technology to potentially integrate that technology into Apple’s products. Apple and Masimo later entered into a confidentiality agreement, and Masimo’s management met with Apple. The meetings included confidential discussions of Masimo’s technology. After what seemed to Masimo to have been productive meetings, Apple quickly began trying to hire Masimo employees, including engineers and key management."
[1] https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/byvrlojrdve/...
My friend got poached, and that lab has none of their brains left to drain. They no longer supply Apple.
a plurality of emitters configured to emit light, each of the emitters comprising at least two light emitting diodes (LEDs);
four photodiodes arranged within the user-worn device and configured to receive light after at least a portion of the light has been attenuated by tissue of the user;
a protrusion comprising a convex surface including separate openings extending through the protrusion and lined with opaque material, each opening positioned over a different one associated with each of the four photodiodes, the opaque material configured to reduce an amount of light reaching the photodiodes without being attenuated by the tissue;
optically transparent material within each of the openings; and
one or more processors configured to receive one or more signals from at least one of the four photodiodes and output measurements responsive to the one or more signals, the measurements indicative of the oxygen saturation of the user.
I would like to assume good faith on behalf of the plaintiffs, but this seems like patent trolling by an otherwise legitimate company.
Whether you think it is a valid design patent or not is a different question. There is no doubt that the outline of the iPhone was iconic, and Apple was trying to protect that, and Samsung was trying to ape it.
Masimo is not a small company coming out of nowhere to capitalize from Apple, they're a decades-old medical equipment company. The case outlines how Apple met with them in 2013 to discuss collaboration. After that meeting, Apple apparently hired away several key-members of Masimo with knowledge about their non-invasive biometric monitoring tech, including their "Chief Medical Officer and EVP for Medical Affairs", who already joined Apple in that same year...
The case claims violation of various patents for non-invasive blood data-collection via LEDs of specific wavelengths and photo-diodes in a specific geometry, patents to reduce power consumption of pulse oximeters as well as patents to detect when a pulse oximeter probe is misaligned on a patient.
But most of all, they can demonstrate in the evolution of the Apple Watch how Apple launched their initial generation without such optimizations but found them to be necessary later-on, so it seems Masimo's patents are not that obvious.
[1] https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/zdvxdyorxvx/...
NTP had it's patents invalidated shortly after RIM settled for most of a $B, but it didn't matter since BB couldn't afford to have their email servers turned off. Apple probably can afford this. I'm not sure if the patents are in reexam or not, but I'd expect them to be.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2562540/update--rim-se...
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US10945648B2/en
They look identical to me btw? both files on 2020-02 and have title of "User-worn device for noninvasively measuring a physiological parameter of a user". From summary:
> light source comprises LEDs and super-luminescent LEDs. The light source emits light at at least wavelengths of about 1610 nm, about 1640 nm, and about 1665 nm. In an embodiment, the detector comprises a plurality of photodetectors arranged in a special geometry comprising...
there are 30 claims and some parts of them seem to definitely be a prior art ("a storage device configured to at least temporarily store at least the measurement").. I wonder what's the real innovation is there?
The standard is to consider ALL of the elements together in the specific configuration. If this were not the case, then any invention that incorporated any conventional element (e.g., a lever) would be invalid.
"The light source emits light at least wavelengths of about 1610 nm, about 1640 nm, and about 1665 nm."
vs
"The light source emits light at at least wavelengths of about 1610 nm, about 1640 nm, and about 1665 nm."
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Do you have examples where apple has aggressively used patents offensively like this?
> March 2010 Apple vs HTC:
Apple's suit alleged 20 separate patent infringements relating to the iPhone's user interface, underlying architecture and hardware. Steve Jobs exclaimed "We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it" The ITC rejected all but one of Apple's claims
> July 2008 Apple Inc. vs Psystar Corporation
Apple Inc. filed suit against Psystar Corporation alleging Psystar sold Intel-based systems with Mac OS X pre-installed and that, in so doing, violated Apple's copyright and trademark rights and the software licensing terms of Apple's shrink wrap license.
>2019, Apple v. Corellium
Apple sued security start-up Corellium for creating the first virtual iPhone-simulating software. The product was created with the intent of helping users research security issues in iOS. Apple's lawsuit argued that Corellium's product would be dangerous in the wrong hands as it would let hackers learn exploits easier, as well as claiming that Corellium was selling their product indiscriminately, even to potential competitors of Apple.
> Apple v. Samsung: Android phones and tablets
By August 2011, Apple and Samsung were engaged in 19 ongoing lawsuits in 12 courts in nine countries on four continents; by October, the fight expanded to 10 countries.
> "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this"
And they did (try), although by proxy through Samsung.
Current patents attempt to claim: this thing I figured out is novel and nobody else should copy me.
Many times, they claim this so someone else can't claim it and thus avoid arbitration.
It would be nice if we could also file: this thing I figured out is not novel and is a natural progression to the current state-of-the-art.
I guess the only means of doing this currently is to attempt to invalidate a patent? Or maybe, a whole swath of patents?
There is nothing truly-novel here (IMHO.) This is like a toothbrush patent with a slightly different number of bristles than every other toothbrush patent in order to sell a toothbrush legally.
isn't this just publishing? no formal procedure required, no government, no patent office, no filing fees, put your a record of your work somewhere that people can find it and then it can be used as prior art in a dispute.
Yes publishing work will allow you to bring it up as a defendant. But by the time you’re called to a law office in west Texas you’re already out millions in legal fees and still run the risk of getting a judgement against you.
What I think they were asking for is something more formal.
See case study of a notable IP monopoly, Watt's steam engine: https://fee.org/media/5345/122008freeman-boldrin.pdf
"Joe Kiani, the chief executive of Masimo, said in an interview that Apple had not engaged in licensing negotiations. Instead, he said that Apple had appealed to President Biden to veto the I.T.C. ruling, which Mr. Kiani knows because the administration contacted Masimo about Apple’s request."
“If they don’t want to use our chip, I’ll work with them to make their product good,” Mr. Kiani said. “Once it’s good enough, I’m happy to give them a license.”
Super interesting case, thought Apple would be less sloppy than this.
Samsung makes most of the displays Apple uses in iPhones and it's probably the most profitable deal Samsung has. They have a messy relationship but neither of them is going to rock the boat too much because no one else can meet Apple's demand and Samsung can't afford to lose that much revenue.
From a user perspective, disabling a widely advertised/used feature after a user has bought something is probably worse than having new customers think it’s out of stock.
I wonder if Apple has been importing like crazy, and selling to big retailers like Amazon and Walmart. That way customers can continue to purchase (albeit not from Apple) for the next several months. Then Apple can perhaps release a new version in May, using different technology that either doesn't infringe, or at least would require a new trial to establish infringement.
If this is the case, I think Apple could even continue to have AW showcases in their stores, where people could try them on, see how the features work, and see which size fits best. After all, this wouldn't violate the ban on importation (assuming the store models were already in the US), nor would it violate the ban on first-party sales (since Apple wouldn't be selling the store models).
It would be cool to build up an intellectual portfolio of stuff that you've thought of uniquely apart from everyone else. To me this would be like (1) a unique challenge of designing novel processes, systems, concepts (2) the reward of having a new IP which would be useful for your portfolio (and may lead to future business opportunities) (3) incentivising people to think more since intellectual work could be 'owned' and the result monetized (either directly or indirectly.)
But IMO - it would have to be cheap so that ideas could easily be registered; efficient - so that authorship could be managed fast (or revoked if 'prior art' is found); and those falsely claiming authorship could be pursed without the patent owners having to act as police for their IP. Ideally, registration fees would cover attorney costs, patent research, and policing the patents (am I being naïve.) Maybe a revenue sharing agreement between patent-owners back into the system could even make patent registrations free which would be massive? Governments could also help back this if it made more jobs (which seems possible to me.)
https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-10-05...
Apple did precisely the sorts of things that big companies are reviled for, and the only good outcome is that this costs them an enormous sum of money, and every scumbag manager involved in this behaviour lose their jobs.
If this were so trivial, Apple may not have needed to hire so many people that worked on the patented technology
I went from a series 0 (OG watch), to this series 9 it’s a pretty nice upgrade!
Personally I expect a Siri overhaul / replacement with an LLM. To me that would be a total game changer and I’d be first in line!
Will others be willing to pay more next month when that lock is in effect?
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-accused-of-rip...
filing patents for something you didn't invent is not the law working as intended.
Optical pulse oximeters are an obvious incremental thing, and with zero knowledge of the space I don’t think it’s crazy to believe these would have come into existence on the same time frame with or without the existence of patents.
Virtually everything humans create or “discover” is an inevitability. We’re all just memetic LLMs, remixing stuff with mildly differing levels of variance. Originality is quaint pre-industrial human myth.
That said, Apple would have absolutely done the same thing if they had the patent. So I have zero sympathy for either party.
Don’t hate the player, hate the “artificially granted ownership over progress” game.
Except there doesn’t seem to be particularly innovative about those patents. Masimo just excepts to be rewarded for filling them..
Right, using US companies such as Samsung, TSMC, Sony, MediaTek...
Crazy.
> To avoid a complete ban on sales, Apple had two months to cut a deal with Masimo to license its technology, or it could appeal to the Biden administration to reverse the ruling. But Joe Kiani, the chief executive of Masimo, said in an interview that Apple had not engaged in licensing negotiations
Will that still happen if you put in a single order to buy 51% of all the shares at a price a little above the current market value ?
That trade will be complete before the market "sees" you are trying to buy a ton.
Source: https://warren.law/blog/protecting-minority-shareholder-righ...
Apple could borrow a large amount of shares of Masimo and short the company.
They have enough cash for that, and the borrow fee might be less than the settlement costs, plus they could profit from the operation.
So if the ownership of the company (Apple Computer, in this case) takes a deliberate act that fails to honor the shareholder compact (taking a huge haircut on a patent license), then you sue them because they should have gotten you more.
> The Constitution establishes the President’s authority to grant clemency, encompassing not only pardons of individuals but several other forms of relief from criminal punishment as well.1 The power, which has historical roots in early English law,2 has been recognized by the Supreme Court as quite broad. In the 1886 case Ex parte Garland, the Court referred to the President’s authority to pardon as unlimited except in cases of impeachment, extending to every offence known to the law and able to be exercised either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment.3 Much later, the Court wrote that the broad power conferred in the Constitution gives the President plenary authority to 'forgive’ [a] convicted person in part or entirely, to reduce a penalty in terms of a specified number of years, or to alter it with certain conditions.4
Despite the breadth of the President’s authority under the Pardon Clause, the Constitution’s text provides for at least two limits on the power: first, clemency may only be granted for Offenses against the United States,5 meaning that state criminal offenses and federal or state civil claims are not covered.6 Second, the President’s clemency authority cannot be used in Cases of impeachment.7
Beyond textual limits, certain external constitutional and legal considerations may act as constraints on the power. For instance, the Court has indicated that the power may be exercised at any time after [an offense’s] commission,8 reflecting that the President may not preemptively immunize future criminal conduct. In Schick v. Reed, the Court recognized that an exercise of clemency may include any condition which does not otherwise offend the Constitution,9 suggesting that the President may not make clemency subject to a condition that is prohibited by another constitutional provision.10 Other apparent limitations include not affecting vested rights of third parties, such as where forfeited property is sold,11 or proceeds paid into the treasury, which can only be secured to the former owner . . . through an act of [C]ongress.12 The Court in The Laura also alluded to an exception for fines . . . imposed by a co-ordinate department of the government for contempt of its authority,13 though a later case recognized that the President may pardon one who is subject to criminal punishment for contempt of court.14
Assuming the recognized limitations are not transgressed, a full pardon granted by the President and accepted by its subject15 prevents or removes any of the penalties and disabilities consequent upon conviction . . . .16 In several nineteenth-century cases, the Supreme Court suggested that a pardon broadly obviates all legal guilt of the offender, effectively erasing the crime from existence.17 Subsequent cases appear to have backed away from this understanding,18 suggesting instead that, although a full pardon precludes punishment for the offense in question, a prior and pardoned offense may still be considered in subsequent proceedings.19
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C1-3...
Do bear in mind that I am not an attorney and this is my personal opinion.
> In its initial filing with the ITC, Masimo accused Apple of 103 instances of patent infringement across five different patents. However, the ITC found that Apple infringed on only two patents, covering five different instances of patent infringements
This is a borderline case and a final decision has not been made. Patent decisions are often in a gray area.
The article you link to is extremely opinionated and it's just as easy to argue the opposite. I.e. Masimo complains that Apple poached some of their employees by paying them more. Well, why wouldn't Masimo pay them what they're worth? Companies try to hire experts away from other companies all the time, and this is good because it pushes up salaries for those experts and fairly rewards them for their expertise.
Masimo isn't some mom-and-pop shop. They have revenue of $1.24 billion. They know what they're doing.
That's like every ITC complaint in the history of ITC complaints. You throw everything at them and your best stuff sticks. They literally need one single complaint to stick, and they have 5. That is incredibly, overwhelmingly strong.
>Companies try to hire experts away from other companies all the time
Apple didn't just hire employees away from them. There would be nothing wrong with that (well, outside of the era of non-competes, which notably Apple was a big fan of and was a legal enforcer of, making that a humorous justification). Apple engaged in a classic "brain rape" to extract value without cost.
I'm a fan of Apple, but it is an extraordinarily greedy company. Maybe the greediest company in history. That is not a good trait, and it isn't beneficial to the industry as a whole.
This is not something Masimo invented themselves. The class of devices existed for decades before Masimo even existed. I'm not saying that Apple's in the right here -- I have no inside information giving me more perspective than anyone else reading this -- but it's far from clear that they did anything wrong.
..., headhunted Masimo engineers, and hired them to reimplement a pulse-ox device.
> Masimo and Apple began their relationship in 2013, when Apple discussed potentially integrating Masimo’s sensing technology into future Apple products. Internally, Apple executives debated the idea of buying Masimo and making its chief executive a vice president, according to documents made public at a later trial. But Apple ultimately decided against it because “acquisitions of this size aren’t our style,” an email reads.
> Instead of buying Masimo, Apple ended up hiring Masimo engineers and began working on the technology itself, Masimo later said.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-to-halt-watch-sales-as-it-pre...
But I think it is something poetic about a company that sues and wins over Samsung for a "design patent" and uses the fact that Samsungs lawyers cannot see the difference as proof...
when that company gets hit by a ridiculous "intellectual property" lawsuit.
Said as an Apple user who has brought in a number of new Apple users, meaning I am not against Apple only against ridiculous "intellectual property" laws.
Once again, this isn’t Apple stealing tech from Joe Shmoe. This is just standard legalistic BigCorp infighting, corporate backstabbing, brain drain/theft, etc.
Side note - I love the infant sp02 tape monitors they have, as they work incredibly well for use on adults with poor extremity perfusion. Earlobe usually works great.
Conversely, if Apple feels comfortable stealing from BigCorp, they will absolutely feel comfortable stealing from Joe Shmoe, which is why this issue should be treated seriously.
Apple needs to be incentivized so that if they're sitting down with a startup and considering if they should acquire and make the founder a VP or just go about stealing the technology that they should pick the former path because they've gotten burned in the past by doing the latter.
It isn't clear to me if Apple's internal team working on this was the original plan - think "embrace, extend, extinguish", or "we'll do the basics, everything else is a 'third-party opportunity'" - or if they were formed as a backstop in the event an acquisition or licensing deal didn't happen.
See also the current situation with AliveCor over ECG tech in the Apple Watch.
Bottom line, Masimo wants to be paid - which I get - but I think the case will also try to settle whether or not Apple (or anyone) can integrate these features in something that (legally speaking) isn't a medical device without paying licensing fees of some kind.
Sure, they acted scummy, but this is just typical BigCorp behavior where one huge corporation steals from another huge corporation.
> Apple, of course, is one of the largest and most powerful companies in history — it’s the first to hit a $3-trillion — that’s trillion, with a T — market cap.
Apple is at least 100 times bigger than Masimo, 500x based on the numbers in the article. Sounds David and Goliath to me.
Add in the despicable behavior and you've got a story where real life is more than fiction could do.
Apple is over 500x bigger than Masimo. 6B vs 3000B+
The amount I rounded down on Apple's market cap (32B) is over 5x bigger itself.
They're not even in the same ballpark to be just "two huge corporations"
But also, judges and courts and all of this stuff exists because at the end of the day human beings look at the facts on the ground. There isn't some sort of magical turing machine that decides on exactitude here.
[1] https://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/22-1631.OPINION.9-...
When Apple is wrong, fixing the problem yourself isn't always an option. Reactions like this shouldn't surprise you if you've seen what HN has to say about Meta, Microsoft and Google.
In any case this is a far cry from a "U.S. global monopoly on high tech products."
Patent trolls often go after individuals and small firms specifically because they can get them to settle as they cannot afford a legal fight. Most make the bulk of their money by without ever getting any judgements.
It’s essentially a legal-system backed shakedown.
LG could ignore trolls and morons - but if Samsung makes a good-faith, fair offer to license the technology, they should have to have a good reason for saying no beyond "we don't feel like it."
One company, Cobasys (owned by an oil company!) purposefully refused to license NiMH technology in transportation. The patent system was never intended to be used like a weapon to protect a market.
This doesn't seem true to me. Nothing about the design of the patent system makes sense if the intent if not to use it like a weapon to let a giant company protect a whole area of the market from competition.
I suppose you could argue that it's Apple violating the patent here, hardly a party to feel empathy for. But they just had the gumption to put skin in this game. We could have tons of competing devices that do this in their own wear-able products with distinct user experiences for each, but somebody beat them all to the patent house so why bother.
Sure. But this doesn’t seem to be particularly relevant in this case? It’s not really a truly new thing and hardly an invention at all
> Masimo has been on the cutting edge of pulse-oximetry
Maybe because they built an artificial patent moat around themselves and no other company can compete?
Philips and Siemens, of all companies, decided to partner and license the technology, and Apple decided they can toss them around.
Sure sure.
https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-ba...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_Research would be out of business if that business model was illegal. You can short all you like; you can't be deceptive/fraudulent about it.
Hindenburg compiles and releases information they believe to be truthful about a company, which they shorted beforehand in order to profit from the information.
What I am talking about is sending orders only to cause a certain reaction (e.g. by convincing momentum traders that there is momentum in a certain direction).
Hyperbolic, sexualized language isn't helpful here.
Why didn't Masimo counter Apple's offers and pay their employees what they are worth? I don't see how this isn't Masimo's fault when they certainly had the money to do it.
I know lots of cases where rival companies tried to hire engineers with highly domain-specific expertise away from rivals and failed, because those rivals would counter offers and provided a great, supportive work environment. If Masimo failed to do that, then that's their own fault.
I side with the employees here. Good on them for knowing their worth.
Was Apple paying them what they were worth, or did they pay them more than they were worth in order to damage Masimo? I don't think we know enough to say one way or the other. There must be some level at which poaching employees with inflated salaries crosses the line into anticompetitive territory.
Masimo is a profitable company, but that doesn't mean they can survive a bidding war against Apple.
Somehow I very strongly doubt they’d have spent that much just paying their employees more.
Masimo's market cap is $6 billion.
Only a proportion of that is net income
> market cap is $6 billion.
Even if > 50% enough stocks are on the market how much do you think Apple would end up paying $12 billion? $16? $20? $25?
How many years would it take them to earn that back?
You can’t really buy companies directly on the stock market, the price will just start going up exponentially.
Also they’d be rewarding patent trolls which creates incentives for other companies to behave the same way so that Apple would acquire them
This doesn’t seem at all like a relevant example. Psystar was engaging in for profit piracy patents are secondary here
So you proved the point that since Jobs tome, they have not use their patents offensively.
I personally don't care when it happens. Big companies that use patents offensively against smaller competitors suck, full stop.
And in Apple's case, every other company is smaller, by definition.
Earlier iterations of the design weren't as chunky as what they're doing now.
PPG readers are tiny, they could easily fit in a watch wrist strap with a little cable connecting back to the main assembly. The hard part would be making sure the sensor is aligned with the LED.
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/news-and-media/dmv-reminds-mot...
Steve Jobs was notorious for trading in his car every 6 months so that he could park in handicapped spaces without being ticketed.
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/steve-jobs-car-apple-ceo-l...
I don’t want to say Market Cap doesn’t matter, but man is it irrelevant to most discussions and mainly of use to PR agents that want to spin a David and Goliath story.
"You launch a product that doesn't work and then you fix it later" is a common strategy but it really shouldn't be.
Secondly, just because it's obvious, doesn't mean it doesn't take some time to figure it out. You can leapfrog by bringing in people who already know.
But no, that’s actually the hard part. Something Apple did manage to accomplish quite well though (just like many other smaller companies would be able to do if there were no trivial patents preventing them from doing that).
Apple could acquire Masimo in a stock swap and it would be barely a blip on their share dilution.
Of course something like this is not easy to prove.
> with them and then try to hire their engineers
This doesn’t seem to be particularly relevant. Apple was trying to entire a new field so they hired people who already work in it
It does if they willingly sell their shares to Apple
> Then they buy the 50.1% of company for $500M and write off the debt to their subsidiary
Well that would not be legal. They’d use their position as the majority shareholder to buy out everyone else and delist the company (of course they could still not sell, they’d just end up having shares in a private company)
Why would they do that? That's literally just giving away money. I still think you're failing to understand the principle at work here. You can "control" a public company with a 50.1% share, that doesn't allow you to steal from the remaining shareholders. That's what shareholder lawsuits are about: the shareholders collectively feel that the company is not acting in the interests of its owners and sue.
Now, sure, often this is abused. Often the suits are baseless and mostly just attempts by law firms to squeeze some dollars out of the process. But the actions described in this subthread are exactly why they are allowed in the first place. You can't do that.
To me, it's clear that hiring competitors' employees is not morally wrong, and for the most part it's not legally wrong either, PROVIDED those employees do not take along their prior employers' confidential information.
We've had easy fingertip pulse oximetry since 1977, and Masimo was founded in 1989. It's unclear to me what in their patent is novel.
The form factor square with rounded edges in itself has been used for calculators and pocket PCs long long long before iPhone hasn't it?
A mountain of pettiness and I imagine, childhood frustrations.
I don’t care particularly about Apple or their watches. Yet even Apple can’t win against a patent troll that means any smaller company would never be able to develop and sell their products without paying Masimo.
The design patent is very specific. It isn't about rounded corners in general.
Patent (incl. prior art): http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1701443/USD670286S1.pdf
How to think about it: https://www.theverge.com/2012/11/7/3614506/apple-patents-rec...
What Samsung did that forced Apple to enforce their design patent was copy the design EXACTLY down to the _exact_ radius of the corners.
All they had to do was not 100% copy Apple's design, just by changing the ratios a bit and they would've been unaffected.
Apple didn't come up with anything new or incredible, it lends nothing to their brand or to the function of the device. There's no negative impact on Apple if their competition uses the same rounded corner radius.
Saying so otherwise is just playing into the Apple vs Samsung vs Everyone else team based Robert measuring contest where everyone waves the flag of their favourite corporation that they love so much.
Doesn’t this quite plainly mean that they aren’t willing to just license the patent?
How does this statement reject a willingness to license?
I'm not an Apple fan, but this feels like abuse of the patent system. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if it's legal, but being forced to work with a company to access their parent feels like absolute bullshit.
Ask for your $X per device sold and be done with it.
You can argue that it is somewhat moot here, as Apple was not showing any willingness to negotiate. But the post above is somewhat accurate, in that there is no guarantee that negotiations will end in a license.
Why is that revelation "wild?"
Imagine saying,
> It’s so wild that [Bernie] is allowed to refuse to [allow Bob] to [rent Bernie's spare bedroom].
putting aside the fact that [Bob] doesn't even want to rent from [Bernie] as applied to the situation here with the watches! :-)
But instead we apparently want to say, "no other company should be allowed to make a watch with a pulse oximeter for 20 years unless the company which employed the inventor agrees to it". Why?
I, sadly, don't know all of the details in this case. But with patents, remember that you don't even have to show that "Bob" even knew of the existence of "Bernie." They could have come to the same general techniques completely independently, but because they were not "first to file," they cannot use them.
(Obviously, if I am wrong on the above, please correct me.)
If I just invent Foxy Cola and use the exact same style of bottle and font, that should be just OK? Branding doesn't matter.
I should also be able to copy any car's design exactly and slap my own brand on it, no repercussions whatsoever right?
While I don't think we should give courts and government-like agencies no scrutiny, I think I'm probably going to put greater weight on the ITC's decision than a random person on the internet who admits they have zero knowledge of the technology in question.
Even though it's inevitable that someone will invest a lot of time to get us better TFT displays in form of IPS, it's very much favorable that he can reap some reward for it.
It's a bit of a gamble and is therefore supplanted by the trade secret and research grant systems, still it's a useful incentive to do cool stuff.
Especially in the distant past, there have been many patents that were really valuable and their inventors deserved to be rewarded.
The main problem is that today patents are granted far too easily. Most patents contain in their claims only things that any competent professional could discover independently after a few hours of thinking about how to solve a problem.
Other claims are for methods that have been known for a long time, but they were not applied for various reasons, e.g. of cost or efficiency, to the applications described in the patent. Then some unrelated technological progress happened, which may not be mentioned at all in the patent, which suddenly enabled the extension of the application domain of the old method, and then someone quickly filed a patent for the new combination of old methods.
Other claims are far too general and cover all the ways that everyone could list about how to solve a problem, even if most of them are not practical at present and the inventor would not be able to demonstrate any functional implementation, but they are inserted in the patent claims for the case that someone will discover in the future a suitable technology, when it will become possible to claim that it infringes the patent.
Many patents are just reformulations of much older patents, from decades ago, perhaps filed in other countries, but they use such an obfuscated language that it is difficult to determine that in fact the different patents claim the same things.
I have read many patents, but the most recent they are, the less likely it is to find in them anything that I consider innovative or that would justify in any way to consider the patent as valid.
Nevertheless, few individuals or companies would be able to bear the expenses and risks of trying to invalidate patents, so there are many examples when inferior technologies have been used for decades in order to circumvent bogus patents.
Moreover, the days when most patent owners used the patents as a direct source of revenue are long in the past. Today few patent owners are willing to license them at fair and non-discriminatory prices. Most use the patents only as a means to prevent competition.
Currently in the US, for better or worse, actual scrutiny happens when you try to claim infringement, not at application.
>Other claims are far too general and cover all the ways that everyone could list about how to solve a problem,
This is covered by the non-obvious clause.
>Today few patent owners are willing to license them at fair and non-discriminatory prices.
Plain wrong.
2) Train another LLM to throw patents at the first LLM and see what sticks.
3) Profit.
Einstein upended every other human beings notion of space and time. Copernicus also proposed something preposterous for his time. Would you say they just remixed stuff with mild variance?
When Einstein published his theory of Special Relativity, it did not contain any fact or formula that had not already existed previously in the works of Lorentz, Poincaré and many others. It was just a new and original point of view about which is the meaning of those known relationships (i.e. that it is the speed of light which is constant in all reference systems, while other quantities are variable, instead of making other choices about which quantities are constant and which are variable).
His contribution is actually very similar with that of Copernicus, who also did not provide any new fact or relationship, but just a new choice about which position should be considered constant, Sun's or Earth's. Both changes were very small compared with the existing knowledge, but they were very important for enabling further progress.
Every progress is really incremental and it adds very little over the existing body of knowledge, even if the addition is essential for any further progress and for improving the practical applications.
It had no influence on the theory of Special Relativity (1905).
Einstein is the one who changed the meaning of the word "tensor" to the meaning used today in most cases, when tensor means a general multi-dimensional quantity. I could not find any information about the reason why Einstein has chosen to make this change in terminology.
Before Einstein, "tensor" (a term introduced by Hamilton) was applied only to symmetric matrices (because general matrices can be decomposed into "versors", i.e. rotation matrices that rotate vectors and a "tensor", i.e. a symmetric matrix that stretches vectors).
While Ricci has invented the concept of tensor, he has not used the word "tensor". Nevertheless, because Einstein's theory had become extremely fashionable at the end of WWI, when Ricci's work has been translated and published in USA, the American editor has introduced the word "tensor" everywhere in the book and they added on the covers that this is the book needed to understand Einstein's tensor theory, in order to promote the sales of the book.
Thus, Ricci's calculus became known as tensor calculus, first in USA, then everywhere.
You're asking philosophical questions about the patent system. I'm not defending the patent system and IANAL.
I recommend the wiki article to get an overview [0]. Your phrasing doesn't align with my understanding of patent law or the article's characterization of the situation.
> The patent isn't personal property that the company "owns" like how a person owns a house...
> But instead we apparently want to say, "no other company should be allowed to make a watch with a pulse oximeter for 20 years unless the company which employed the inventor agrees to it".
I'm not depriving the horse of water because the horse doesn't want to drink!
This kind of subtle differences matter quite a bit from a UI perspective. You could have a punch to zoom system where a pinching motion always resulted in fixed changes to zoom levels. You could describe both implementations as “pint to zoom” but one is a lot more user friendly than the other.
In any case, the rotation thing is also just pretty rudimentary trigonometry/linear algebra.
Also, Boxed already replied by complaining about rotation in the Map app imagine the hate if Safari did let you rotate. Removing features is just as critical for UI design as adding them.
This discussion has devolved into abstract swipes at the patent law system with characterizations that don't even apply if you take the article at face value.
In the "compulsive licensing" world, it would be "wild" to not allow someone to perform a song that you played first. Which is why we don't allow that.
In fashion, it would be wild for you to have certain button schemes that nobody else can use. We don't allow that. In math, it would be wild to have equations nobody could use. We... sorta do not allow that.
That's not what I'm taking issue with.
Remember, the entire premise of this subthread isn't even grounded in the facts of this case!
There is no set price to buy shares. If you just want to buy 100 shares at the current ask, it'll probably go through (but even that is no guarantee), but the next 100 shares might well not be available at that price anymore.
That's not how the market works. There are not enough open sell orders at any price (let alone a little above most recent price) for someone to sweep in and buy 51% (or even just a few percent) at once.
As soon as more than a trivial (in the noise) amount of your buys goes through all the open sell orders will start to move up in price (since it's nearly all automated), so you'll be chasing that ever-increasing price a long way up.
For small-time consumers who are buying a few shares here and there - it will appear like there is always some available, but when you are talking about a majority share of the company there isn't that availability sitting there waiting to be just taken.
Also companies have an obligation to report once they have accumulated a certain percentage of a company.
They'll charge a handsome fee, but they could probably get it done.
> Bid [500 x $64.39], [$64.42 x 100] Ask <
It means that someone currently offers to buy 500 shares at the price of $64.39.
It means that someone currently offers to sell 100 shares at the price of $64.42.
In practice, it means that you can buy 100 shares at the price of $64.42, then, after, it will move to the next price level.
=> You can see the "depth" of offers, it's called Level 2 book:
Ask offers:
$64.42 x 100
$64.43 x 200
$64.46 x 100
$65.00 x 600
$97.00 x 100
$999.99 x 100
=> If you try to buy 400 shares, it will cost you:
100 shares x $64.42 = $6 442
200 shares x $64.43 = $12 886
100 shares x $64.46 = $6,446
Divided by 400 shares.
It means ~$64.435 per share, though you saw $64.42 as price.
If you send very large volumes, you quickly eat these price levels.
In our example, if you try to buy 2000 shares, you will get only 1200 shares.
You will have paid an average price of $145.39 per share.
So, yes it may not go through because, it is possible that there are not enough people interested to sell their share (that there is not enough depth, or not at an acceptable price).
And also, the SEC has certain rules (uptick rules, etc) that makes the stock to be frozen in case the price varies too much.
When we are talking about a massive % of the total share count there simply isn't that many "sell" requests out there for you to take advantage of.
Also, the original idea for pinch zooming dates back to 1985, but I have no idea what that UI was actually like.
> the individual who does the invention gets a normal salary which they would've gotten anywhere doing anything
may no longer be true.
When the General Relativity was developed in 1917, the Ricci calculus was no longer recent, but it was 17 years old.
Therefore what the OP supposed, that there was an immediate causal relationship between these lines of work, is not true.
17 years old I think is quite recent given the gap between special and general (would you say no immediate connection between them because of the length of that gap?), and there were presumably other pieces involved.
If your whole argument is "it should be legal to refuse to license a patent", I don't know why you went down the whole "They aren't refusing to license the patent" route.
You're making it out like the individuals do not benefit from company's success. I'm saying that's not true, the continued existence of the company is a benefit to the individual.
The aftermath is this lawsuit, which illustrates that Apple needed their hires to build something that was already existing in Masimo and would have been subject of that partnership.
I'm sure this "brainrape" strategy often works flawlessly, especially on smaller companies. But in this case the tech was already patented.
I don't know much about Masimo but they appear to be operating like an old school hospital technology company. They list 'algorithm developer II' salaries of $130k - 190k and requiring a MS or PhD - good luck keeping people when big tech turns its focus on an industry.
https://egcu.fa.us6.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperienc...
You mean like Leslie Lamport who was "bought" by Microsoft ? Or former X windows developers who created Wayland ?
A lot of minds create once. Then live to exploit their creation.
The corporation isn’t paramount, the individual is. Saying Apple “brainraped” Marino because Masimo didn’t want the employees to leave with their skills leaves out the very important part that employees wanted to leave.
Companies should be able to hire away key talent because it helps the talent who get hired away. As well as the talent who stay.
The point is that Apple had Masimo describe their tech, the issues and methods they developed to solve them, and Apple walked away to rebuild Masimo's solution.
They succeeded, but unfortunately for them the methods were already patented IP of Masimo, that company which explained this whole field to Apple in first place.
The fact that Apple hired Masimo staff to do so is just the smoking gun.
Trying to understand this sentence. 1. Who is asking who out behind whose back now? 2. I gather you think it's not her choice to go out or not if she wants to, since she is your property now?
Its highly amoral. That may be fine (but clearly law may say otherwise), many companies do it. But then some folks not only here on HN preach Apple like second coming of Jesus also for its supposed 'high morality' and 'taking care of privacy'.
Nah, just another huge amoral corporation, this time with great marketing. As long as we can cca agree on that all is fine. Till then, I'll keep pointing to tens of cases like this to naive folks or paid PR posts worshiping them (the idea that there are none on such influential place like HN is... unwarranted)
If the original company doesn’t want their staff to be hired away, they can pay them better or provide gardening leaves.
If they have such amazing technology, why don’t they monetise it and pay their employees well? They can provide vesting options to their key employees that require them to stay.
In this case, Apple hired those key-members because they wanted the tech which was developed in the environment created by Masimo. They got what they wanted, but turns out that tech was also patented, so here we are.
I don't mean the people shouldn't chose to be compensated well but if you are up against practically infinite funds there is no realistic option for a counter offer.
They hired-away Masimo staff to achieve that, the thing they left behind and didn't acquire was the actual tech.
This strategy surely worked hundreds of times, in this case they picked the wrong company because the tech was already patented.
It also ignores that the Apple employees hired may not have even contributed to the Watch feature in question, because surely all of Apple works on everything Apple does.
The patent system is ridiculous.
Making large offers to attract employees isn’t even unethical or illegal, much less anyone near rape.
Intellectual property robbery thinly disguised as acquisition talk. Usually committed by a big company on a startup.
They would still be paying Masimo compensation and would continue for as long as the watches were sold.
This way, they write one check, and are done.
Is it a completely shitty way of doing business? Absolutely.
Does it happen every day? Also, absolutely.
All of this is confirmed:
- It's agreed by both sides that meetings took place in 2013 and subsequently a confidentiality agreement was made.
- Within the same year Apple hired Masimo's Chief Medical Officer and EVP for Medical Affairs, along with additional staff.
- They developed and integrated the IP of Masimo into a commercial product.
- A judge ruled that Apple infringed patents of Masimo [1].
There's not so much room for things to have gone another way. They were aware of the company and its tech, they met with them, they hired the people away from this company, they built the tech, ultimately violating their IP.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-judge-rules-apple-watches-i...
If Apple, or some other company, approached you to rebuild what you built at your current company, for a lot more money - are you really telling me you're going to say no and that's the moral thing to do?
Why are you trying to protect a company, a fictional entity, over the employees that make it up?
You exclude the only topic in discussion here.
Noone is framing this as an issue of individual employees. It's an issue between two companies, and one of them has a very thin argument to claim that it didn't systematically extract the other one's IP without paying for it.
As mentioned elsewhere: This strategy surely works most of the time, especially on smaller companies unable to survive 10 (!!) years after their IP has been extracted to await justice. But this time it didn't work because the other company is successful in another industry and has patented the technology.
Then why are we (as a group) talking about prior meetings, or employees getting hired?