Sources: Apple is working on a software fix to avoid an Apple Watch ban in the US over Masimo's blood oxygen patents; Masimo says “the hardware needs to change”
- Company submitting software workaround to customs agency — Apple engineers are racing to develop fixes for patent issue
Context & Ripple Effects
Masimo’s dispute with Apple began with a 2020 lawsuit alleging infringement involving blood-oxygen and heart-rate technology. Apple’s proposed workaround is an early attempt to keep the product in the US market without resolving that underlying patent conflict.
The later record shows the practical boundary of that approach: CBP permitted sales with pulse-oximetry disabled, while Apple subsequently said it was pursuing an appeal rather than a patent license. That makes the workaround consequential not simply as an engineering response, but as a test of whether software can separate a wearable’s sale from a contested health feature.
First-order effects
- Apple must submit a workaround that customs can treat as non-infringing, while Masimo immediately contests the premise that software alone can cure the alleged infringement.
- The Apple Watch’s blood-oxygen capability becomes the product feature most directly at risk; the later CBP outcome indicates sales could continue only with pulse oximetry disabled.
Second-order effects
- Apple’s remedy narrows the dispute from an outright product-import question to a feature-availability question, creating pressure to preserve sales while limiting a differentiating health function.
- Masimo’s insistence that hardware must change raises the cost and uncertainty of designing around medical-sensing patents, rather than simply treating software updates as a universal compliance tool.
Third-order effects
- If regulators continue to accept feature disabling as a remedy, import disputes over connected devices may increasingly be resolved through region-specific software configurations rather than full product withdrawals.
- The case highlights a durable fault line in health wearables: patent exposure can attach to the combined sensor-and-software system, leaving the sufficiency of a software-only workaround open to continued legal and administrative challenge.
The trend: Connected-health hardware is increasingly being shaped by patent enforcement through feature-level remedies, with software controls becoming a key—but contested—tool for maintaining market access.