In the latest bankruptcy in the Apple Watch saga, Apple has sold the Apple Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2 without their built-in blood oxygenation feature.
This is the result of an ongoing case filed through Masimo, which claims that Apple infringed on its patents by creating Apple’s blood oxygenation feature.
The feature has been removed from Apple’s online page in the U. S. It is no longer listed on the device’s datasheets.
The second piece of good news is that this affects the Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 models sold in the US. Owners of existing Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 watches can still use the blood oxygenation feature.
Will it still be like this in 3 months? This is transparent today.
Apple may not have made any hardware adjustments to make this happen, a move that in itself would be incredibly costly and time-consuming. Instead, you’ll have disabled the feature at the software level.
According to 9to5Mac, the app used to take blood oxygenation readings will still be there, but it won’t work.
“The Blood Oxygen app is no longer available. Learn more in the Health app on your iPhone,” is the message, according to the site.
Apple is clearly hoping this will be a temporary state of affairs, but recent developments in this story have not come down in Apple’s favor. This is not a new story either.
Masimo accused Apple of infringing on its patents in 2021, following the launch of the Apple Watch Series 6, the first model with blood oxygen measurements.
However, the grudge runs deeper than that. Masimo accused Apple of stealing industry secrets in January 2020, according to Bloomberg, and sought to sell the Apple Watch Series 5.
Dating between the two corporations also goes back much further. A former Masimo employee, Marcelo Lamego, has been accused of taking corporate secrets and leaking them while employed through Apple in 2014. And of course, in 2022, a California district court ruled that Lamego had “misappropriated of trade secrets,” according to Businesswire.
This dispute goes back a decade and only in the last few months has it become so public and had such an impact on Apple’s business.
The FTC ruling that Apple did indeed use Masimo patents landed in October 2023, and its appeal to the ITC to avoid an import ban came late that same month. This ban was temporarily lifted by a U.S. appeals court in December. But a sales ban was reinstated on January 17 by the same U.S. appeals court, which is the catalyst for this latest move by Apple.
This may remain the prestige quo until the appeal of the ITC’s initial ruling is followed through the process, which can take up to a year. As such, this will most likely not only affect existing models but also the next generation. The Apple Watch Series 10 is expected to be announced in September 2024.