President Biden could have made the whole thing go away by using his Veto stamp on the exclusion order, but he failed to do so. Apple tried to figure out a way to offer the pulse oximeter without Masimo’s patents, but could not come up with a solution. As a result, it now sells the two timepieces without the pulse oximeter which is used to measure the amount of oxygen in a person’s red blood cells. It measures how well your body is pushing oxygen to your extremities like your arms and legs. A low reading could be a sign of hypoxia which means that not enough oxygen is reaching your body’s tissues.
The pulse oximeter feature on the Apple Watch
Apple had to provide Masimo with the code it used to disable the pulse oximeter feature on the Series 9 and Ultra 2 Apple Watch models. To make sure that Apple didn’t make it too simple to bring back the feature, it took a jailbroken Apple iPhone running an older version of iOS and paired it with Apple Watch models that could not run the pulse oximeter. Masimo got upset when it discovered that it could bring back the feature by doing this.
Masimo argued that this meant that Apple had not really removed the pulse oximeter from the impacted timepieces. The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol disagreed and said that Apple had done enough to say that the redesigned Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 models did not infringe on Masimo’s patents. As a result, when the patents Apple infringed on expire in August 2028, or if Apple wins an appeal that is in progress, those who bought the two Apple Watch models without having access to the pulse oximeter can have Apple reinstall the feature quickly.
