By Blake Brittain
WASHINGTON, March 19 (Reuters) - A U.S. trade tribunal preliminarily ruled that Apple's current Apple Watches do not infringe patents owned by Masimo, rejecting the medical-monitoring company's bid for a renewed import ban on the tech giant's smartwatches.
Apple altered its watches to circumvent an import ban that the U.S. International Trade Commission issued in 2023. An ITC judge agreed with Apple in a ruling made public on Thursday that the redesigned watches do not violate Masimo's
patent rights in blood-oxygen reading technology.
The full commission will now decide whether to affirm the decision.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Thursday separately affirmed the tribunal's 2023 ruling that had blocked Apple from importing Apple Watches that infringed Masimo's patents, although Apple has since resumed importing its redesigned watches.
Apple said in a statement that it was pleased with the ITC's decision and will evaluate "all avenues for further review" of the Federal Circuit's ruling. "For six years, Masimo has brought dozens of false claims against Apple, nearly all of which have been rejected," Apple said.
A Masimo spokesperson declined to comment.
The cases are part of a contentious, multi-front patent fight between Apple and Masimo, an Irvine, California-based medical monitoring technology company that has accused Apple of hiring away its employees to steal its pulse-oximetry innovations used to determine oxygen levels in the blood.
The ITC blocked imports of Apple's Series 9 and Ultra 2 smartwatches in December 2023 after finding that they infringed Masimo's patents. Apple removed blood-oxygen reading technology from its watches to avoid the ban, but reintroduced an updated version of the technology last August with approval from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Masimo has separately sued Customs over its approval of the redesigned watches.
The updated watches display health data from the blood-oxygen reader on associated Apple devices like the iPhone and not the watch itself. Apple's original version displayed the data on its watches as well.
Danaher in February agreed to buy Masimo in a $9.9 billion deal.
Masimo has separately sued Apple in California federal court for patent infringement and trade-secret theft, and won $634 million in a November patent trial. Apple has said it would appeal the verdict.
(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
