Mikey Campbell
Medical technology company Masimo on Thursday filed a legal complaint claiming Apple infringes on 10 owned patents with its Apple Watch device, and stole vital trade secrets through the hiring of key personnel.
Lodged with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the suit alleges Apple Watch, including the latest Apple Watch Series 4 and Series 5 models, leverages technology covered by ten Masimo patents. Specifically noted in the case is intellectual property detailing Apple Watch health features like heart rate monitoring.
According to the filing, Masimo is a pioneer of non-invasive physiological monitoring techniques having developed a wide range of technologies to track patients' pulse rate, arterial oxygen saturation and other parameters using nothing more than transmitted light.
In particular, Masimo invested heavily in the evolution of photoplethysmograph, or PPG, technology. While exact methodologies differ, PPGs at their most basic level sample readings from light transmitted into, and subsequently reflective off of, body tissue. Results can then be obtained by calculating attenuation of light from constituents in the human body, specifically blood.
The company's Signal Extraction Technology (Masimo SET) solved a variety of problems that plagued traditional PPG hardware, improving reliability and accuracy of reporting of physiological signals derived from the PPG, the suit reads. Masimo went on to develop other non-invasive technologies measuring total hemoglobin, carboxyhemoglobin, and methemoglobin.
In 2013, prior to the launch of the original Apple Watch, Apple approached Masimo with a potential deal that would integrate the medical firm's technology into an as-yet-unreleased product. Following what appeared to be fruitful initial talks, Apple stepped back and in 2014 began to hire key Masimo personnel including former Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs Michael O'Reilly and Cercacor CTO Marcelo Malini Lamego. The tech giant has adopted identical strategies in the past.
Cercacor is an offshoot of Masimo, having been spun out from the main company in 1998 as "Masimo Labs" and later renamed. While the two companies share a cross-licensing agreement, Masimo does not own Cercacor.
Masimo and Cercacor warned Apple about potential legal violations, but the iPhone maker went on to pursue patent applications covering topics similar to those already patented by the medical technology firms. Lamego, named as an inventor on many of these patents, was "intimately involved" in the development of corresponding technologies at Cercacor and Masimo, suggesting the executive aped the sensitive IP on behalf of Apple.
In addition to infringement and trade secrets claims, plaintiffs seek correction of inventorship on five patents, the subject matter of which Lamego allegedly obtained from discussions with Masimo or Cercacor employees Ammar Al-Ali, Mohamed Diab and Walter Weber. The suit claims Al-Ali, Diab and Weber are inventors of the IP "regardless of patentability."
Masimo seeks an injunction against Apple Watch Series 4 and Series 5, damages for patent infringement and theft of trade secrets, and court fees, among other relief.
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35 Comments
This one is going to be interesting. There's no specter of "patent troll" here.
Did a check on this company and in 2014, Law.com reported that, "Knobbe Martens partner won a $466.8 million verdict for Masimo Corp. over infringement of patents related to blood-oxygen monitoring technology." The lawsuit was against Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronic and it was upheld in 2015. I'm wagering that Cook and Co. will settle out of court.
From the article:
And to think Apple would hire away a patented inventor and then NOT take pains to ensure that his work for them builds on but doesn’t violate the patents held by his former employer? That’s a stretch. Of course Apple was aware of his inventions and the associated patents owned by his employer when they hired him away. That’s the valuable deep knowledge they hired him to acquire. So of course they would have taken great pains in this situation to ensure his work with Apple, while based upon his previous work, would be sufficiently modified to avoid infringement. I’ll be surprised if the plaintiffs succeed on a single infringement count.
Masimo and Cercacor warned Apple about potential legal violations, but the iPhone maker went on to pursue patent applications covering topics similar to those already patented by the medical technology firms. Lamego, named as an inventor on many of these patents, was "intimately involved" in the development of corresponding technologies at Cercacor and Masimo, suggesting the executive aped the sensitive IP on behalf of Apple.
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There’s nothing wrong with ‘aping,’ other than the term being a bit Victorian. An inventor of technology obviously has deep knowledge of the subject matter, it’s his area of expertise. If Cercacor and/or Masimo had non-competes in play with Lamego and he went to Apple to work on competing technology during the period when those non-compete agreements were in effect, then pursue that legal avenue. But otherwise he has the right to make a living utilizing his area of expertise. And ‘aping’ as they refer to it may be exactly how patented technology advances. You start with a great idea, that someone else has patented, and you modify it to both make it better and to change the method utilized sufficiently to avoid infringing the patent. Done all the time.
What about all the other wearable heart rate monitors on the market today and those that pre-existed the Apple Watch? Normally I am suspicious of the "everyone is a lying thieving crook but Apple who can do no wrong" crowd but even if the Apple Watch has "the best" heart rate monitor on the market among wearables there are plenty that are quite good. Garmin, Fitbit, Samsung and even Fossil are reported to have good ones in their watches and bands by the various consumer review sites and a good percentage of them even rate Garmin's as better. It may not be an open standard like, say, bluetooth but it still appears to have been a common and widely implemented technology for years.