- Apple has been fined $634 million in a long-running Apple Watch case
- It is the result of a legal dispute between Apple and Masimo
- The health technology company claimed that Apple has infringed its patents
Apple has been embroiled in a legal dispute with medical technology company Masimo for years over the latter’s claim that the Apple Watch’s blood oxygen analysis violated its patents. Now, Masimo has been awarded a mammoth $634 million in the case, and there are potentially significant implications for fans of the best Apple Watches.
The case dates back to 2020, when Masimo filed a lawsuit alleging that Apple had infringed several of Masimo’s patents. As a result of that case, Apple was banned from shipping smartwatches with its blood oxygen monitoring feature in the US, a ban that is still in effect. That means that while Apple Watch fans in the rest of the world can use the feature, it is disabled on any Apple smartwatch that reaches the hands of US customers.
Technically, the decision didn’t stop Apple from selling the Apple Watch entirely: as long as the blood oxygen feature was not present, Apple could continue shipping the device. That led Apple to implement a fix whereby blood oxygen monitoring technology is still present on the Apple Watch but disabled at the software level for US customers.
Thanks to a creative solution from Apple, there is a way to monitor your blood oxygen on your Apple Watch, but it requires the help of an iPhone. That means it’s far from the simplified method that Apple first implemented and which the company no doubt wants to return to.
In any case, all of that was before the latest court decision. Now, a jury has decided that Apple infringed Masimo’s intellectual property, and the $643 million in damages will become one of the largest fines for a consumer technology case in the history of the Central District of California court system.
What’s next?
Although a ruling has been reached, the case is far from over. This is because Apple says it does not agree with the verdict and has expressed its intention to appeal. In a statement to AppleInsider, Apple said:
“We disagree with today’s decision, which we believe is contrary to the facts. Masimo is a medical device company that does not sell any products to consumers. Over the past six years they have sued Apple in multiple courts and asserted over 25 patents, most of which have been found invalid. The only patent in this case expired in 2022 and is specific to decades-old historical patient monitoring technology. We plan to appeal.”
That means that for now nothing much changes. US-based Apple Watch customers still won’t be able to use the Apple Watch’s blood oxygen feature, while users elsewhere should not be affected.
Until the appeal is heard and a decision is made there, we suspect things will continue as they are, and neither Apple nor Masimo seem willing to budge.
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