Apple Appeals US Ban on Apple Watch Blood Oxygen Feature

Apple has asked a U.S. federal appeals court to overturn an import ban on Apple Watch models with blood oxygen monitoring capabilities, arguing that the decision was based on a patent dispute involving an undeveloped competing product, Reuters reports.

On Monday, attorneys for Apple appeared before a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to contest a 2023 ruling by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) that blocked imports of the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 in 2023 due to alleged patent infringement. The ban stemmed from a complaint filed by Masimo, a medical technology firm based in California, which accused Apple of violating its patents related to pulse oximetry — the measurement of blood oxygen saturation through non-invasive sensors.

Apple's legal counsel this week argued that the ITC's ruling was unjustified because, at the time Masimo filed its complaint in 2021, the company had not yet brought a competing product to market. Masimo's first smartwatch, the W1, which included blood oxygen tracking, was not released until 2022 — two years after Apple introduced the feature with the Apple Watch Series 6.

Apple maintains that Masimo's device was not market-ready when the company filed its complaint, and that the legal standard should not permit hypothetical products to justify trade restrictions. The decision had wrongly "deprived millions of Apple Watch users" of the blood-oxygen feature, Apple's attorney said.

Masimo's attorney countered that Apple was attempting to "rewrite the law" by asserting that the ITC should only block imports when a physical, commercialized product exists at the time of complaint filing.

The ITC originally ruled in Masimo's favor in October 2023, determining that Apple's implementation of blood oxygen measurement technology infringed several of Masimo's patents. As a result, the commission issued an exclusion order blocking imports of Apple Watch models that included the contested functionality. Following a brief stay granted by the Federal Circuit in December 2023, the import ban was reinstated in January 2024.

Apple subsequently modified its devices for the U.S. market, disabling the blood oxygen sensor in newly sold Series 9, Series 10, and Ultra 2 models in order to resume domestic sales without violating the order. International models retain full functionality.

The case remains under consideration by the Federal Circuit. A ruling is expected later this year.