Apple Watches with blood oxygen tech are banned again::A ban on selling the Apple Watch Series 9 and the Apple Watch Ultra 2 will be reinstated after the US Court of Appeals lifted its stay.
I feel like this kinda tech should be more widely available if it’s for health reasons, to avoid a monopoly on something vital.
Patents literally are a government granted time-limited monopoly. There are a number of reasons why the government grants these monopolies. Perhaps, the ethics of medical patents should be debated, but if we collectively don’t grant patents on vital medical technologies, then I think it is unlikely that corporations are going to invest billions developing and testing life saving drugs. (Another debate: are private corporations the best stewards of developing this technology.)
For now, this is the system we’ve engineered ourselves into a corner with.
I don’t really care about some blood oxygen monitor in a smart watch, but inadvertently destroying the pharmaceutical industry over it probably ought to be carefully considered.
Doesn’t the government usually fund drug research and development?
In the U.S., private companies spend about 5x on drug development than the government. The numbers are probably fuzzier than that though because I don’t think the government spending numbers capture things like grants to graduate students working on drug research.
Inadvertently destroying the pharmaceutical industry would be one of the best possible outcomes.
I think you just answered the question why monopolists are working so hard at preventing that.
The blood oxygen sensor on the watch is a novelty and is not a medical device. It’s not accurate enough to provide any actual medical help.
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Lemmy has mostly been the same as Reddit in that sense - whenever someone says ‘here’ with no context, you know they are a yank.
USA is the primary market for Apple, this could mean that the blood oxygen sensor ends up being disabled for everyone.
Apple crying foul when caught abusing IP. Yet when they have it done to them “HITTHEMWITHEVERYTHINGWEHAVE!!!11!!”
Apple should lobby for relaxation of IP laws.
Good luck with that.
