Well, thats a problem. How in the world are you granted a patent for something that has been used in another product for going on 4 years???? Did anyone in the patent office think....."The patent you are asking us to approve is already being used in Apple Watch, dont think we can grant you a patent to a existing product AND one thats gone to market years ago"
The date a patent is granted isn't what matters when it comes to prior art and assessing novelty and nonobviousness. In general, the date that matters is the application date.
I might, on Day 1, file an application specifying (i.e. describing) a, b, c, and d, where such specification supports a claim (I make) based on the elements X, Y, and Z. Then, on Day 100, you might publicly disclose a product (or an idea) which includes the elements X, Y, and Z. But your disclosure, on Day 100, wouldn't affect whether my claim was (possibly) valid as being both novel and nonobvious. In other words, it wouldn't count as prior art in the assessment of those criteria. So, on Day 485, my application - which includes the claim based on X, Y, and Z - might be granted. My priority date is Day 1. That, generally speaking, is when the clock started running on the term of my patent - the period of time during which others might be found to have infringed it. That term would generally be 20 years for a utility patent, but adjustments to its length might be made.
Further, and relevant to the patents at issue here, a continuation patent application can claim a priority date based on when a parent application was filed. All four of the patent applications at issue are continuation patents. They refer back to earlier patent applications, making somewhat different claims than those previous - i.e., parent - applications. So long as the claims made by the subsequent applications are supported by the specifications in the parent applications, the subsequent applications are entitled to priority based on the filing date of the parent applications. All four patent applications have parent applications filed before the Apple Watch was publicly disclosed.
I might, on Day 1, file an application specifying a, b, c, and d, where such specification supports a claim (I make) based on the elements X, Y, and Z. Then, on Day 600, you might publicly disclose a product (or idea) which includes elements X, Y and V. Then, on Day 700, I might file a continuation application which makes a claim based on the elements X, Y, and V (or X and Y, or X, Y, and U), which is also supported by the specification in the original application. There are a number of reasons I might do this. For instance, I might realize that the examiner isn't going to allow my original claim so I want to make a different one which might be allowed. Or I might think a broader claim (e.g. one with only 2 elements) would be allowed, and that would be better than having a narrower claim. Or I might realize that you were trying to design around my claim, but were doing so in a way that was anticipated by my original specification (even though it wasn't originally claimed). The key is, the specification (i.e. the description) in my original application has to support my modified claim. I can't just make new claims based on what I saw that you were doing or based on new ideas I had. If I do that, I can't claim a priority date based on the original application.
Then, if my new claim was supported by my original specification, on Day 900 my continuation application might be granted such that my priority date was Day 1. Your disclosure, on Day 600, wouldn't matter (and wouldn't have mattered) when it came to assessing novelty and nonobviousness. It wouldn't represent relevant prior art.
To be clear, I'm not asserting that the patents at issue (or specific claims made in them) are valid. I don't have enough information to assess their validity. They may well eventually be found to be invalid for any of a number of reasons. My point is that, Apple's disclosure of the Apple Watch prior to the granting of the patents at issue doesn't - nor should it - mean that they're invalid. That's not, for good reasons, how patent law works. Patent applications are, after a period of time and often prior to their being granted, published. If they could be made invalid by intermediate disclosures made by third parties, that would be all kinds of problematic. Applicants with pending patents often, themselves, disclose aspects of those pending patents to third parties. If doing so meant that those third parties could then make disclosures (prior to the patents being granted) which would effectively invalidate the patents, that would be all kinds of problematic.
Note: Claims are actually part of the specification in a patent application. Here, for explanatory purposes, I've treated them as something different. A continuing application can change the claims made without giving up the priority date of the parent application. But it can't change the description of the invention, and how it might work, without giving up that date. Also, a typical patent application makes multiple claims. Here I've referred to applications only making a single claim each.
