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Comment by explaininjs

It’s regarding the arrangement of LED’s and sensors in the watch, along with the signal processing needed to get reasonable data out of them.

My impression of the whole debacle is that Masimo hired up a bunch of smart people, they invented this tech while being paid next-to-nothing by Masimo (as Masimo didn’t have the product development chops to actually bring anything to market), Apple saw that the tech was good and just neeeed a product/marketing team, Apple tried to acquire Masimo, their CEO tried to play hard to get, so Apple ”stole” (offered compensation commensurate to their technical prowess) all the engineers who actually made the thing and just built it in house from “scratch”.

It’s a tricky case to be sure. But I’m all for the outcome where consumers get cool tech and the people who actually made it (notably not the Masimo CEO) get fair compensation for their work.

The aspect a lot of people here gloss over is that the patent that Masimo owns wasn’t actually developed by anyone currently at Masimo. Apple “owns” all the people, but Masimo “owns” their accomplishments. It’s weird.

parent explaininjs 2 years ago

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