At the turn of December and January, dramatic events in the field of patent law unfolded in the United States: Masimo, with the support of American regulators, banned Apple from selling Watch Ultra 2 and Series 9 smartwatches with an active pulse oximeter function in the country. As it turns out, legal grounds to return it from Apple will appear in 2028.
As the IP Fray resource explains, the patents of the first company disputed by Masimo and Apple are valid until the end of August 2028, so if the parties do not earlier reach an agreement that will allow Apple to activate the function of measuring blood glucose in users of Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2, then formal grounds The Cupertino company will be able to do this by September 2028. True, it should be understood that by that time it may already stop regularly releasing software updates for these smart watches, but the ban will also apply all this time to new models of watches, which in the rest of the world can retain the function of a pulse oximeter, since the ban applies only to the US territory.
According to the source, Masimo specialists decided to check the reliability of Apple blocking the controversial function on the watches of these models, and they managed to return it using some old iPhone models with hacked software and an old version of the iOS operating system. It is unlikely that such experiments will be reproduced en masse by ordinary users, but the very possibility of the program activating the function is practically not disputed. Accordingly, even if the parties do not reach an agreement earlier (or Apple does not prove its case in court), the company will be able to activate the pulse oximeter function by releasing a software update in the fall of 2028. However, outside the US, this feature on Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 will continue to work in previous years, unless new circumstances arise.
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