https://www.masimo.com/technology/co-oximetry/set/
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en (this is one that was cited by the trade commission.)
You come up with an amazing breakthrough that will alter the world? Congratulations, it's yours for 10 years to do what you want. After that, it's fair game. Innovate or die.
That’s how patents work in the US. You get 10 years with the ability to extend 10 more. There are games to be played with some patents that extend their life (like a new use patent in pharma) but generally these parents for seemingly old things are new ideas about an old thing.
If you want a short fun read on Solar Panels [0] you’ll find a Melvin Severy referenced. That’s my ancestor. We don’t see a penny from his work because that patent is long gone and is just referenced as prior art. Feel free to use it all you’d like.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/sponsored/brief-history-solar...
USA used to have 'submarine patents' that could appear later, but apart from that there doesn't seem to be any jurisdiction in which a 33 year old patent would still be valid.
I'm no fan of patents, but medical devices/medications are extremely expensive [in the US] to develop.
The parent comment was wrong: a 1989 idea would basically not be under patent past about 2011.
What you're arguing against is corruption, not patents.
The very idea of intellectual property though, you own your mind, you own your thoughts, sure. You can own a document with the details of your idea, and you can physically restrict others from seeing your property. What does it mean for an idea to be property though? Why are government resources invested in protecting something that private companies and individuals have the responsibility of protecting themselves?
How can an individual protect themselves if a big company steals their ideas?
They might have marginally more protection over their ideas than a than a big company can due to leaks, but I dont fundamentally believe that ideas should be protected under the law, assuming a just legal system. I'll break this into 2 parts.
I don't think governments have a great track record of protecting interests, and a theory why. Whatever political system we have, power will centralize in an elite that uses it for their own purposes. Slavery in America was not funded on its merit, it was in fact heavily subsidized at the expense of working americans and the states were turned into fortresses to imprison the slaves. This occured under an arguement that the government should protect private interests. Whatever power you give the government, the elite will steal; an aside, even when the elites are killed in places like russia during the soviet revolution, it was at the behest of a newer and much darker elite; anyways, a corrupt intellectual property system, because government power is prone to capture.
I disagree with the concept that ideas can be owned, as opposed to merely possessed. Allow me to cast abducto absurdum on this, taken to its logical conclusion, does this idea create absurd results? If we were chronically dehydrated in africa, and I figured out how to make a pump to get water, and im willing to make more pumps for trade, would it be reasonable that the rest of the village is going to die of dehydration because you, fully capable of recreating and innovating on the design, were instead bound by intellectual property laws? If that is in fact absurd, then I would like to know what the line is and why.
> [the user-worn device comprising, among other things: ] one or more processors configured to receive one or more signals from at least one of the four photodiodes and output measurements responsive to the one or more signals, the measurements indicative of the oxygen saturation of the user.
So if your device includes one or more processors, and those processors aren't just decorative, you're in violation. What processing you do is not relevant; what's patented is that you do any processing of any kind.
Note that Apple's violation does not seem to have been related to data processing; they were adjudged to have directly violated claim 22, which is the device described in claim 19 plus a series of modifications and/or clarifications, of which the modification/clarification unique to claim 22 has to do with the configuration of the LEDs in the device.
If the problem had to do with their data processing, they probably would have been found in violation of claim 19 instead...?
If you built it with wavelengths that worked, it'd be covered by the patent. If you built it with wavelengths that didn't work, it'd probably be useless.
"It is essential that the broadest reasonable interpretation (BRI) of the claim be established prior to examining a claim for eligibility."
“It is well-settled that mere recitation of concrete, tangible components is insufficient to confer patent eligibility to an otherwise abstract idea”
Flowchart on Pg 19. Section 2016 for the general examination process: https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/mpep-2100.pdf
The patent you cite was filed in 2009, and is set to expire in 2028. Patents only are supposed to last 17 years in the US, not 39 years.
Anyway, the clip on one’s probably don’t use the algorithms from 1989 or and whatever is in the patent, since the innovation was using a flat detector instead of a clip. Clips were working fine for 20 years before SET.