On Friday (Nov. 14), Apple was hit with bad news concerning its Apple Watches from two different sources: the ongoing Masimo lawsuit and the U.S. government. The company lost a patent lawsuit to Masimo and faces a potential ban from the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC).
Reuters reports that a federal jury in California ruled in favor of the medical-monitoring technology company Masimo as part of the long-running patent battle between the two firms. The jury said that Apple must pay $634 million for infringing on a Masimo-owned patent covering blood-oxygen monitoring technology.
An Apple spokesperson told Reuters that the company plans to appeal the verdict.
"The single patent in this case expired in 2022, and is specific to historic patient monitoring technology from decades ago,” the spokesperson said.
Tom’s Guide has reached out to Apple for comment on the Masimo lawsuit and the ITC investigation and will update this piece if the company responds.
How we got here
The California lawsuit is only one front in an ongoing war between Apple and Masimo that began in 2021 with an initial lawsuit that ended in a mistrial in 2023. Despite that, in December of 2023, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) upheld a ruling stating that Apple violated Masimo’s patent, which partially halted sales of the Apple Watch 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2.
At the time, Apple disabled the blood-oxygen technology in its watches to avoid the ban and launched a new version in August with approval from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
In the last year, it seemed like legal decisions were going Apple’s way. In October of 2024, Apple won a patent lawsuit (and $250) from Masimo, though it didn’t directly affect the banned blood oxygen feature. In that lawsuit, a Delaware jury ruled that Masimo had infringed on two Apple patents.
Later in March of this year, a different lawsuit between Apple and AliveCor ended with Apple in the clear. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a previous verdict, concluding that all three of AliveCor’s patents were unpatentable.
Apple vs the ITC
Separately, on Friday, the ITC decided to hold a new proceeding to determine whether or not imports of Apple Watches should be banned as part of the patent dispute. The ITC released a report indicating that the tribunal would investigate whether Apple redesigned its smartwatches to get around a previous important ban issued by the ITC, and if that redesign still infringed on Masimo’s patents.
The ITC is set to conclude the investigation within the next six months.
The last ban was instituted in 2023 when the ITC ruled that Apple infringed on Masimo’s pulse oximetry patent. This is what led to the blocked sales of the Series 9 and Ultra 2 watches.
If upheld, Apple could face another ban that would block the sale of its Apple Watches. It's unclear from the ITC report if any future action would affect current Apple smartwatches, including the recently released Apple Watch Series 11, Apple Watch SE 3 and Apple Watch Ultra 3.
For now, despite rumors, Apple has avoided putting blood-oxygen tracking in its latest smartwatches.
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