Malcolm Owen
The Apple Watch sales ban nightmare may have been started by a Masimo employee offering to help Apple create its own blood oxygen sensor, sent in an email to CEO Tim Cook.
Apple's ongoing legal wrangling with device producer Masimo over the Apple Watch stems all the way back to 2013, a report claims, in an email to Tim Cook. The email triggered not only a new feature for the Apple Watch, but also a legal headache that would see the wearable device banned from sale in the United States.
Buried in legal documents is an email to Tim Cook from scientist Marcelo Lamego, sent in the early morning in 2013, reports Bloomberg. The email boldly claimed the scientist could help "develop the new wave of technology to make Apple the No.1 brand in the medical, fitness, and wellness market."
A mere 10 hours later, an Apple recruiter contacted Lamego, and he was working as an engineer at Apple within weeks, tasked with developing health sensors. Within months, Lamego asked to file a dozen patents for sensors and algorithms to measure a person's blood-oxygen level.
The problem with the situation was that Lamego was previously the CTO of Cercacor Laboratories, the sister company of Masimo.
The headache employee
The email and hiring is believed to be the reason why Masimo went after Apple, calling it part of Apple's employee poaching in its patent infringement suit.
Lamego worked for Masimo in 2003 as a research scientist, then became the CTO of Cercacor in 2006.
Masimo says Lamego didn't have knowledge of how to develop the blood-oxygen feature before joining the company, and instead used his experience gained at the firm to assist Apple. Lamego resigned from Apple months after joining, with Masimo alleging Apple got rid of him after getting what it needed for the sensors.
Apple employee Steve Hotelling instead explains the departure was due to Lamego not being a good fit with the company, citing stories of clashes with managers, demands of million-dollar budgets, and wanting free reign to hire engineers without needing approval.
Apple did previously approach Lamego before the email, doing so a year beforehand in 2013. It was a time when Apple executives met with Masimo to secure technology for the Apple Watch, but Masimo believes it was used by Apple to learn about its technology and to prepare to hire others.
Though Lamego didn't leave for Apple at that time, he apparently changed his mind after Masimo CEO Joe Kiani decided not to make him CTO of Masimo itself. Apple also hired on Masimo's former chief medical officer and 20 others.
Though the email may have been considered the smoking gun for Masimo's lawyers, it didn't really help during Masimo's main lawsuit against Apple. A senior Apple engineer testified that the blood-oxygen feature's development didn't actually start until months after Lamego left the company.
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8 Comments
Regardless, the issue is whether there was a patent violation. How it came about is not relevant.
A patent violation is a patent violation, accidental or purposeful. Defenses can be brought, such as "there is only one way to do this" or "it's obvious from prior art", or ...
I haven't read any analysis of why there was not a licensing agreement in the first place, once litigation was a possibility.
Masimo thinks this hiring was a smoking gun when it was really just a leaky water pistol.
Why do these companies trust Apple with their trade secrets?
Employees in California can leave a company and work for a competitor - there are no restrictions on that as long as they do not take any physical or electronic material with them. They can take all the knowledge they have and learned at the previous employer. So Apple is free, like any company, to hire away engineers and they can work on the same project they worked on at the previous company. As mentioned previously the hiring of that company's engineers is irrelevant to the patent case.
To me , it sounds like the CEO is thinking with his heart not his head, a dangerous way to behave as CEO. Maybe the board should have some words with him about brinkmanship with Apple.
Interesting character this Marcelo Lamego.