The tech giant, which has been in an ongoing patent dispute with the medtech company Masimo over its smartwatches’ blood oxygen feature, will have to stop selling the Series 9 and Ultra 2 watches with the monitoring functionality — again — after a US court ruling.
The company had already started pulling the watches from shelves in mid-December following a decision by the International Trade Commission last year, which found that the Ultra 2 and Series 9 violated Masimo’s patent. The ruling, which the Biden administration decided not to veto, bars Apple from importing the watches from outside the US.
Apple had gotten a brief respite in late December when the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted the company’s emergency request to temporarily pause the import ban from going into effect — allowing it to sell the watches again.
On Wednesday, however, that court denied Apple’s request for a longer pause intended to last throughout the appeal period of the ITC ban. It will now, again, have to stop selling the two watch models that feature the contentious blood oxygen function until the appeal is resolved.
Apple has appealed the ITC’s ruling, arguing that the import ban will cause “irreparable harm” to its business.
The news doesn’t mean Apple won’t be able to sell modified versions of the watches. In preparation for this ruling, it had found a software workaround for the import ban, redesigning the Series 9 and Ultra 2 to remove any blood oxygen functionality features.
US Customs and Border Protection reportedly found that the ITC’s import ban would not apply to the redesigns, so Apple is in the clear to sell the new versions for the time being.
The company won’t be able to sell its smartwatches with the blood oxygen feature at least until its appeal of the import ban is resolved, a period that Apple expects will last at least a year.