Apple Continues Fight to Return Blood Oxygen Sensing to the Apple Watch
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Apple and Masimo’s legal battle over the Apple Watch’s Blood Oxygen sensing feature continues this week as both firms meet in a California court for a bench trial. Masimo is expected to argue that Apple illegally poached some of its employees and stole trade secrets while developing the Apple Watch feature.
In addition to the patent dispute that forced the removal of the Apple Watch blood oxygen sensor in the US, Masimo filed a separate lawsuit against Apple in 2020. That one wasn’t related to patents but claimed that the Cupertino firm stole trade secrets and improperly used Masimo health monitoring inventions in the Apple Watch.
A jury trial held in April 2023 ended in a mistrial. During the trial, the court tossed out several of Masimo’s trade secret claims. The seven jurors in the case could not come to a final decision, as six of the jurors sided with Apple, while a lone juror saw things Masimo’s way and would not change her mind.
While both companies were scheduled to retry the case with another jury, Masimo abandoned any claims for monetary compensation to get a bench trial instead. The company had originally asked for $1.85 billion in damages, royalties, lost profits, and a penalty for willful trade secret appropriation.
While Masimo is no longer asking for monetary damages, it is seeking an injunction against the Apple Watch. The bench trial will first determine if there were indeed any trade secret violations and will then consider Masimo’s request for an injunction. Masimo initially accused Apple of infringing on 17 patents in both its trade secret lawsuit and its complaint to the US International Trade Commission (ITC). However, 15 of those 17 patents were invalidated following an ITC review, leaving only two to fight over. However, these remaining patents were enough to result in the ITC ruling that the Apple Watch infringed on Masimo’s intellectual property, ordering it banned from import and sale in the United States.
Masimo’s trade secret lawsuit against Apple is separate from the ITC injunction preventing the sale of Apple Watch models with blood oxygen sensor-enabled. Apple has also filed its own patent infringement case Apple against Masimo.
While Apple is appealing the ITC’s injunction on the Apple Watch’s blood oxygen sensing features, the Cupertino firm has been allowed to keep selling the wearable by disabling the allegedly infringing sensor. Apple Watches sold before the injunction went into effect can still use the blood oxygen sensing features, as it remains enabled on those Apple Watches.
To convince the ITC to ban the Apple Watch, Masimo was forced to hurriedly create its own smartwatch in 2022 to prove it was indeed using the infringed patents. However, Apple says that in doing so, Masimo deliberately copied several of Apple’s patents to create the W1 Freedom smartwatch. Last week, a jury decided in Apple’s favor, awarding the $250 token damages Apple had requested. Apple hadn’t been aiming for a big payday but instead wanted to stop Masimo from copying the Apple Watch design.
Apple hopes the appeals court will overturn the ITC injunction and allow it to reintroduce blood oxygen sensing into the Apple Watch models sold in the United States. However, even if Apple doesn’t prevail in its appeal, Masimo’s patents are set to expire in 2028. All Apple Watch models, including the new Series 10, still include the necessary blood oxygen hardware; it’s disabled in the US models via software, but what can be disabled can be re-enabled, and Apple likely plans to do this as soon as legally possible.
The legal battles between these two foes have been going on for several years, as the companies have waged the war on multiple fronts. While Masimo convinced the ITC to ban the Apple Watch due to the infringing blood oxygen sensing technology, Apple overcame this by simply disabling the feature, allowing it to continue selling the wearable in the US with little to no impact on sales.
