Apple loses bid to overturn $634 million Masimo patent verdict, new trial also denied

Apple’s requests to overturn a $634 million patent verdict and secure a new trial in its long-running legal battle with Masimo were denied. Here are the details.

A bit of background

In early 2020, medical technology company Masimo sued Apple, accusing it of stealing trade secrets and infringing patents related to pulse oximetry and other optical health-monitoring technologies used by the Apple Watch.

Since then, the companies have been locked in a sprawling legal battle. In 2023, Masimo secured an International Trade Commission (ITC) ruling that led to a US import ban affecting Apple Watch models equipped with blood oxygen monitoring.

This prompted Apple to temporarily halt sales, later resuming sales of affected models with the blood oxygen feature disabled. In 2025, the company introduced a redesigned feature that measures and calculates sensor data from the Apple Watch on the paired iPhone, with results displayed in the Health app. Masimo subsequently sued US Customs and Border Protection over its decision to allow imports of watches featuring the redesign.

Meanwhile, the patent portion of Masimo’s original California lawsuit proceeded separately from the ITC case. In November 2025, a jury found that the Apple Watch’s heart-rate monitoring and notification features infringed a different Masimo pulse oximetry patent and ordered Apple to pay $634 million in damages.

Since then, Apple has been attempting to overturn this finding, which brings us to today.

Judge upholds the jury’s findings

As reported by Law360 (via AppleInsider):

Apple has lost its bid to dodge a jury’s finding that it owes $634 million for infringing a Masimo Corp. patent after a California federal judge rejected the tech giant’s challenge to how the court construed a key term and its bid for a new trial. U.S. District Judge James V. Selna turned down Apple’s request for judgment as a matter of law or a new trial in the multipronged litigation, rejecting one of Apple’s arguments that its product was not a “patient monitor” as required by Masimo’s patent.

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