Blake Brittain, reporting for Reuters:

Apple asked a U.S. appeals court on Monday to overturn a trade tribunal’s decision which forced it to remove blood-oxygen reading technology from its Apple Watches, in order to avoid a ban on its U.S. smartwatch imports.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit heard arguments from the tech giant, medical monitoring technology company Masimo, and the U.S. International Trade Commission over the ITC’s 2023 ruling that Apple Watches violated Masimo’s patent rights in pulse oximetry technology. [...]

Apple attorney Joseph Mueller of WilmerHale told the court on Monday that the decision had wrongly “deprived millions of Apple Watch users” of Apple’s blood-oxygen feature. A lawyer for Masimo, Joseph Re of Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear, countered that Apple was trying to “rewrite the law” with its arguments.

The judges questioned whether Masimo’s development of a competing smartwatch justified the ITC’s ruling. Apple has told the appeals court that the ban was improper because a Masimo wearable device covered by the patents was “purely hypothetical” when Masimo filed its ITC complaint in 2021. [...]

Mueller told the court on Monday that the ban was unjustified because Masimo only had prototypes of a smartwatch with pulse oximetry features when it had filed its ITC complaint. Re responded that Apple was wrong to argue that a “finished product” was necessary to justify the ITC’s decision.

This whole thing started with the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 1 in 2023. I’m very surprised that we’re just two months away from the Series 11 and Ultra 3 in 2025 and it still isn’t settled. And to be clear, while it’s technically an “import ban”, all Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Ultra 2 have the blood oxygen sensors. Units sold in the US after December 2023 simply have the feature disabled in software.

(Via Chance Miller at 9to5Mac.)