The aftermath is this lawsuit, which illustrates that Apple needed their hires to build something that was already existing in Masimo and would have been subject of that partnership.
I'm sure this "brainrape" strategy often works flawlessly, especially on smaller companies. But in this case the tech was already patented.
The corporation isn’t paramount, the individual is. Saying Apple “brainraped” Marino because Masimo didn’t want the employees to leave with their skills leaves out the very important part that employees wanted to leave.
Companies should be able to hire away key talent because it helps the talent who get hired away. As well as the talent who stay.
The point is that Apple had Masimo describe their tech, the issues and methods they developed to solve them, and Apple walked away to rebuild Masimo's solution.
They succeeded, but unfortunately for them the methods were already patented IP of Masimo, that company which explained this whole field to Apple in first place.
The fact that Apple hired Masimo staff to do so is just the smoking gun.
All of this is confirmed:
- It's agreed by both sides that meetings took place in 2013 and subsequently a confidentiality agreement was made.
- Within the same year Apple hired Masimo's Chief Medical Officer and EVP for Medical Affairs, along with additional staff.
- They developed and integrated the IP of Masimo into a commercial product.
- A judge ruled that Apple infringed patents of Masimo [1].
There's not so much room for things to have gone another way. They were aware of the company and its tech, they met with them, they hired the people away from this company, they built the tech, ultimately violating their IP.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-judge-rules-apple-watches-i...
If Apple, or some other company, approached you to rebuild what you built at your current company, for a lot more money - are you really telling me you're going to say no and that's the moral thing to do?
Why are you trying to protect a company, a fictional entity, over the employees that make it up?
You exclude the only topic in discussion here.
Noone is framing this as an issue of individual employees. It's an issue between two companies, and one of them has a very thin argument to claim that it didn't systematically extract the other one's IP without paying for it.
As mentioned elsewhere: This strategy surely works most of the time, especially on smaller companies unable to survive 10 (!!) years after their IP has been extracted to await justice. But this time it didn't work because the other company is successful in another industry and has patented the technology.
Then why are we (as a group) talking about prior meetings, or employees getting hired?
Making large offers to attract employees isn’t even unethical or illegal, much less anyone near rape.
Intellectual property robbery thinly disguised as acquisition talk. Usually committed by a big company on a startup.
They would still be paying Masimo compensation and would continue for as long as the watches were sold.
This way, they write one check, and are done.
Is it a completely shitty way of doing business? Absolutely.
Does it happen every day? Also, absolutely.
I don't know much about Masimo but they appear to be operating like an old school hospital technology company. They list 'algorithm developer II' salaries of $130k - 190k and requiring a MS or PhD - good luck keeping people when big tech turns its focus on an industry.
https://egcu.fa.us6.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/CandidateExperienc...
You mean like Leslie Lamport who was "bought" by Microsoft ? Or former X windows developers who created Wayland ?
A lot of minds create once. Then live to exploit their creation.
Trying to understand this sentence. 1. Who is asking who out behind whose back now? 2. I gather you think it's not her choice to go out or not if she wants to, since she is your property now?
But living beings aka people do operate the company and make the decisions.
It also ignores that the Apple employees hired may not have even contributed to the Watch feature in question, because surely all of Apple works on everything Apple does.
Its highly amoral. That may be fine (but clearly law may say otherwise), many companies do it. But then some folks not only here on HN preach Apple like second coming of Jesus also for its supposed 'high morality' and 'taking care of privacy'.
Nah, just another huge amoral corporation, this time with great marketing. As long as we can cca agree on that all is fine. Till then, I'll keep pointing to tens of cases like this to naive folks or paid PR posts worshiping them (the idea that there are none on such influential place like HN is... unwarranted)
If the original company doesn’t want their staff to be hired away, they can pay them better or provide gardening leaves.
If they have such amazing technology, why don’t they monetise it and pay their employees well? They can provide vesting options to their key employees that require them to stay.
In this case, Apple hired those key-members because they wanted the tech which was developed in the environment created by Masimo. They got what they wanted, but turns out that tech was also patented, so here we are.
I don't mean the people shouldn't chose to be compensated well but if you are up against practically infinite funds there is no realistic option for a counter offer.
The patent system is ridiculous.
They hired-away Masimo staff to achieve that, the thing they left behind and didn't acquire was the actual tech.
This strategy surely worked hundreds of times, in this case they picked the wrong company because the tech was already patented.