Apple Loses Haptics Patent Case to Taction
Blake Brittain (PDF, patent 1, patent 2, Hacker News, 9To5Mac):
A US jury ruled that Apple owes San Diego-based Taction more than $5.7 billion for using its patented technology to power the haptic feedback in iPhones and Apple Watches. Apple said it would appeal the country’s largest such verdict to date.
[…]
Apple denied the allegations and said the patents were invalid.
Taction Technologies has real products (used in various headphones) -- in case anyone is wondering about whether the company is only a patent troll.
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What’s complicated about this case is that Apple developed the Taptic Engine before Taction filed its original patent application. Apple’s original Taptic Engine was different from what Taction later patented. However, Apple subsequently redesigned the Taptic Engine, and those later designs incorporated a combination of suspensions and ferrofluid damping that a jury (in California -- this isn’t in Texas) has now found fall within Taction’s patent claims.
In effect, the jury says that Taction has proven Apple has infringed, but not that Apple did so knowingly.
[…]
Apple was accused of buying and reverse-engineering two Kannon headsets that used the technology.
The $5.7 billion seems so high compared with the $634 million in the Masimo case where Apple seemed a lot more guilty.
Previously:
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>The $5.7 billion seems so high compared with the $634 million in the Masimo case where Apple seemed a lot more guilty.
Maybe an IP thief patent infringer recidivist like Apple should be held to a higher standard. Three strikes is good enough for a car thief, perhaps Apple should have an arbitrary multiplier applied to their payouts each time they get done for this.
>The $5.7 billion seems so high compared with the $634 million in the Masimo case where Apple seemed a lot more guilty.
Usually, damages are calculated by some amount per infringing device. The damages in the Masimo case were based only on sales of infringing Apple Watch models. This includes sales of infringing iPhones.
I there is not proof that Apple did it knowingly, the $5.7 billions is definitely too high. Patents system is a monopoly, it is granted by the government to promote innovation. In this case it send scary signals to all potential innovators way more than encouragement to do something new.
@Dima Jury found Apple did not willfully infringe on the patents. But even if engineering came independently to what is described in the patent, Apple has a fleet of legal which should have caught it. It's their job. Let alone two patents.
6B$ is chump change for Apple anyway.
The point of patents is that it doesn't matter if infringement is unintentional, IF one entity gets the patent first, everyone else is supposed to stop working on solutions if they're similar enough to be infringing, and pay the original patenter for their solution.
You invent it first, everyone has to buy yours.
It's not just to reward innovation, it's to prevent inefficiency through reinventing wheels.
"Apple has a fleet of legal which should have caught it."
I'm not so sure. Apple probably does a hundred things every day that are patentable and/or already patented by somebody else. I very much doubt it's feasible for Apple to find all these instances.
Worse, 99.999% of the time when patent infringement happens, nobody notices, and nobody cares. So if you go actively looking for instances of your own patent infringements, you just made your problems much, much worse than they would have been otherwise.
Worst of all, if you make stuff, it's best not to think about patents at all and never look at them, because willful infringement tends to result in higher fines than accidental infringement. Don't talk about patents, don't look at patents, don't mention the word "patents" at all, and when you get sued, discovery will find nothing indicating that you knew anything about any patents.
"It's not just to reward innovation, it's to prevent inefficiency through reinventing wheels."
We don't have to defend this system; it's stupid, but it is what it is. The more large corporations feel the pain of this dumb system, the more likely things are to change.
I'm generally favorable to the idea of patents, but the current system is insane.
We need to narrow them to actual substantial things, not minor tweaks or obvious thing. Also the life time for patents need to be shortened drastically for computer related patents as innovation is happening so fast 20 years is a crazy amount of time. Especially when you can effectively extend it with a minor obvious tweak on the same process.
> innovation is happening so fast 20 years is a crazy amount of time
Though, to be fair, both patents involved seem to have been filed in the US in 2019.
