Apple has reportedly disabled blood oxygen sensing in the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 on newly imported units to work around the ITC’s import ban.
Both the blood oxygen sensor and app are at the heart of Apple’s legal troubles with Masimo. This medical startup accused the iPhone maker of lifting its patented technology for the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 models.
This doesn’t affect existing stocks of the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 with the feature enabled. However, new units imported into the country will have blood oxygen sensing turned off. Again, this applies only in the United States. In other parts of the world, those devices continue to offer blood oxygen sensing.
The Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 are currently available because Apple was successful in staying the ban on December 27 while it was making its appeal.
Apple thwarts the ITC’s import ban by disabling blood oxygen sensing
No public release of the filing is available to protect confidential information, but 9to5Mac has spotted a Monday filing from Massimo where the company claims that Apple’s “redesign” was enough to work around the ITC’s import ban.
Concretely, the filing points out that the Exclusion Order Enforcement Branch of the Customs and Border Protection agency decided on January 12 that “Apple’s redesign falls outside the scope of the remedial orders in the ITC investigation underlying Apple’s appeal.”
Masimo also wrote that Apple claims that “its Redesigned Watch products definitely (1) do not contain pulse oximetry functionality.”
The filing doesn’t clarify what changes Apple has made to skirt the import ban, but it’s almost certainly a software change to disable blood oxygen sensing on the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2.