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Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

Note that no court has ruled the Masimo patent is valid. They ran this through an expedited legal procedure that bypasses patent review.

In all likelihood, the patent will eventually be tossed out, but that process takes a year or two.

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Is it possible that Apple is fighting so hard on this because the Masimo patent also covers applications in blood glucose which Apple has sunken nearly a decade of intense fairly independent R&D into at this point?

Isn’t this backwards? They don’t validate a patent but assume it is until it is invalidated.

That’s the beauty of this process from a patent troll perspective. It is expedited, and therefore can’t be blocked by having a proper review that could invalidate the patent.

> That’s the beauty of this process from a patent troll perspective

I know you didn't draw the connection explicitly, but I just wanted to point out that in this particular case, Masimo isn't a patent troll - they're a company that sells actual devices - https://www.masimopersonalhealth.com and is listed on the NASDAQ with market cap of $6 billion.

Within the healthcare sector, Masimo is well-known to use very aggressive legal procedures against their competitors.

And? Nintendo is known to use very aggressive legal procedures against their own customers but they are still a beloved company.

What does expressing their legal rights / etc have to do with morality?

Well known would imply multiple sources. I see none.

Well, as someone who works in the healthcare sector - it’s a household name, like “Philips” or “Baxter” or “Medtronic”.

I’ll add that many were already invalidated as part of the ongoing legal battle. Apple was also not found to be infringing on others. There are only a few left in question at this point. Given the direction it has gone so far, Apple has a pretty good chance of being found to not infringe on any of them.

IIRC the ITC can rule that patents are invalid (or not infringed). ITC trials are more expedited than patent trials in District Courts, and an appeals court would also do a deeper dive. But that doesn't mean that the ITC's determination of infringement doesn't indicate that the ITC also found them to be valid. It's also possible that Apple didn't raise this argument at the ITC trial, but that would be very unlikely (it's one of the most obvious arguments to make when being sued for patent infringement).

I'd presumed that patents are presumed valid unless invalidated (which I think is a problem in itself)

What? If you presume that a patent is invalid, then what is the patent office for?

You pay them to make sure the patent in valid before granting it. Why would one part of the government always preaume that the other part of the government is wrong?

Apple didn't argue the patents were invalid at the trial?

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