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 expunged from Apple’s U.S. website, no longer visible on the devices’ spec sheets.
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? It’s transparent at this point.
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 you’ll see, according to the site.
Apple obviously expects this to be a transitory situation, but recent developments in this story are in Apple’s favor. It’s not a new story either.
Masimo accused Apple of infringing its patents in 2021, following the release of the Apple Watch Series 6. This was the first model with blood oxygen readings.
The bad blood runs deeper than that, though. Masimo accused Apple of stealing trade secrets in January 2020, according to Bloomberg, and sought to have the Apple Watch Series 5 pulled off sale.
Appointments between the two corporations also go back much further. A former Masimo employee, Marcelo Lamego, has been accused of taking corporate secrets and leaking them while he was hired through Apple in 2014. And of course, in 2022, a California district court ruled that Lamego had “misappropriated 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’s decision that Apple used Masimo’s patents was issued in October 2023, and its appeal to the ITC to avoid an import ban came later the same month. That ban was temporarily lifted through a U. S. appeals court in December. But on Jan. 17, a sales ban was reinstated through the same U. S. appeals court. This is the origin of this new resolution through 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.