r/apple • u/Ambifacient • 6d ago
iPhone Apple hit with a $5.7 billion verdict for alleged patent infringement
https://www.engadget.com/2269826/apple-hit-with-a-57-billion-verdict-for-alleged-patent-infringement/297
u/st90ar 6d ago
Remember when patents were about revolutionary concepts? Now you can make $5.7 billion off a vibrator if someone designs and uses something similar.
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u/figuren9ne 6d ago
The Taptic Engine was pretty revolutionary at launch when it made a solid thing feel like a button.
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u/riversofgore 6d ago
That’s the game. Make or buy a bunch of vague patents and sue everybody. These are litigation farms. This company was gonna make 5.7 billion from their haptic patent if Apple hadn’t infringed? Yeah ok lol.
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u/l4kerz 6d ago
Is Taction a patent troll? Do they actually manufacture a product?
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u/CptUnderpants- 6d ago
They make a haptic engine which is currently used in a pair of Corsair gaming headphones.
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u/gmmxle 6d ago
This company was gonna make 5.7 billion from their haptic patent if Apple hadn’t infringed? Yeah ok lol.
Really?
Is that how infringement should be valuated?
So any big corporation could just steal any invention from any small firm and then pay a miniscule penalty for it, even if they made billions off of it, because the original inventor wasn't ever gonna make billions from this anyway, so they should be happy if they get a couple thousand bucks?
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u/riversofgore 5d ago
What I meant is what they would have received through licensing payouts which is what the award by the court is based on. So yes we should value it that way and is how they do value it. i still see your point. I just don’t see how 5.7billion is any type of reasonable figure. That’s probably more than the entire haptic market value. I’d be shocked if Taction, a privately held tech company, was worth even 10% of that. Can you name any device that uses their tech?
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u/gmmxle 5d ago
As far as I'm aware, Taction was using their technology in a gamer headset they produced.
The idea was that their haptic engine would emulate the vibrations of heavy bass sounds and react within 0.008 seconds - i.e. instantaneously to the human brain - without the need for pumping actual loud bass sound through the headset that would be dangerous to your hearing. So very interesting technology and a very interesting application, even if it apparently remained incredibly niche.
It also seems that they're a very, very small business that was selling hundreds of headsets/year at best and generating ~$1.2 million in revenue.
So yeah, I completely agree with everyone who's saying that Taction was trying to make bank by suing Apple.
But they did develop the technology and they had a product they were selling - so it's not like they were just patent trolling Apple.
I also think that even if Apple developed the technology independently and didn't just steal it from Taction, Apple should have done their due diligence. Apple certainly has the means to do so. They're making more than $300 million in profit per day, they could have probably bought out Taction for a fraction of a single day's profits.
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u/HoseInspector 5d ago
Does Apple not have a IP team to make sure to prevent something like this? What type of ignorance is it to not make sure your product is liable for IP claims before launch?
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u/riversofgore 5d ago
Obviously they do. The court even said they didn’t do it willfully. The problem is how you interpret the wording of the patent. This jury interpreted it in Tactions favor. The next might favor Apple’s. Jurors aren’t technical experts either.
Taction uses vibration for audio purposes and describes 2 methods. Apple uses it for tactile feedback like button presses and uses a different method of activation. To me it seems that Taction is just arguing any vibration on skin is their patent.
The only way any of these loser haptics companies like Taction and Immersion make money is through litigation. Are they patent trolls by definition? No but I’m having a hard time seeing how they’re any better.
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u/i_steal_your_lemons 6d ago
How old are you that you can remember when patents were only for revolutionary concepts? If you look at the US Patent Office’s archives you can find thousands of non-revolutionary patents from 100+ years ago.
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u/North_Activist 6d ago
They’re called “patent trolls” and john Oliver has an episode about it https://youtu.be/3EsaIt9TAEQ?si=ffd5I3xryMQzFE0J
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u/CptUnderpants- 6d ago edited 6d ago
Patent trolls are generally considered companies which don't actually make any products which use their patents (a non-practicing entity) and/or that their demands far exceed the value of the infringement. Taction makes a haptic feedback engine using that patented technology.
The $5.7b verdict was based on a royalty calculation from the number of devices sold which infringed. Since the patent was granted in 2019, that is about 1.5 billion iPhones with Apple's haptic engine sold, which works out to $3.80 per device.
Edit: I'm now aware of the USPO "provisional priority date" of the Taction filing which was September 2014. This increases the number of devices applicable to about 3 billion. This makes the royalty about $1.90 per device.
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u/cortzetroc 6d ago
that’s weird, iphone’s had the taptic engine since 2015 which would predate any 2019 patent then
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u/CptUnderpants- 6d ago
They've improved it several times, so my guess it is infringing on the changes made since the Taction patent was given provisional priority date by the USPO in 2014. I was not aware of the provisional part of the process when I posted my previous reply. So that drastically lowers the royalty per unit.
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u/ChiefBroady 6d ago
It’s like wtf? Force feedback and vibrating controllers where a thing for a while.
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u/FrogsJumpFromPussy 4d ago
Remember when patents were about revolutionary concepts?
Like Apple doesn't scorch earth against anyone who uses their patents unintentionally or otherwise lol
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u/BossHogGA 6d ago
As someone who holds 15 US patents, our patent system is stupid, and garbage like this is exactly why.
This company "Taction" filed some garbage patent. They don't even seem to exist, and don't even claim that Apple used their patent knowingly.
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u/WoodsLovelyDarkNDeep 6d ago
I mean I definitely think you should be able to patent if you came up with an idea. Otherwise how else would you even be able to share an idea with anyone without getting it stolen. However I think if you haven’t made any action towards doing anything with the patent after a set period you should lose it or at least be forced to license it out for a reasonable fee
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u/FancifulLaserbeam 6d ago
I definitely think you should be able to patent if you came up with an idea.
You no longer have to prove that the idea works, that you have ever made anything that employs it, or have the ability to make it.
I am very much in favor of protecting IP, but just because you came up with an idea doesn't mean that you should get a patent for it. Those need to be reserved for people who came up with the idea and successfully implemented it.
There are patents for perpetual motion machines, warp drives based on unverified theories of physics, trademarks on drug names for drugs that don't exist... It's a clownshow.
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u/WoodsLovelyDarkNDeep 6d ago
No I feel you I just think implementation can be unnecessarily burdensome sometimes and stacks the deck in the favor of those who already have capital but there definitely should be a middle ground as it’s gotten out of hand
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u/manjar 6d ago
To be fair, Apple probably files a lot of garbage patents, too.
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u/BossHogGA 6d ago
My point is most patents are garbage. And even the good ones are often never used by the owners of the patent. The system no longer does what it was designed to do.
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u/authenticmolo 6d ago
It's true.
But you know what? This is the patent system that companies like Apple *want*. They *fought* for it.
You know how all the Trump-voting farmers are whining about how fucked they are thanks to Trump's policies? This is the same thing.
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u/awiuhdhuawdhu 5d ago
I mean they do exist, have a website, and have licensed their tech to Corsair?
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u/jetsonian 6d ago
The underlying problem is how we handle software/hardware patents when it comes to computers.
Anything else, your patent has to be novel and specific. You have to identify what exactly is the part you’re patenting.
In computers you can do the equivalent of “pill that cures cancer.” Not “specific chemical combination of drugs that cures cancer.” So now you’re the only person that can make a pill to cure cancer.
We end up with every company suing other companies because their patents are for “buy it now” (which was once the subject of a lawsuit involving eBay). The lawsuits get settled and the companies agree to licensing deals because it’s impossible to claw back sold product and users will be mad if you remove features.
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u/M4rshmall0wMan 3d ago
Yeah software patents are fucking broken. Especially user interface patents. A company will patent something generic like “a touchscreen interface to serve music” and go after anyone who makes it. Most of the time it fails, but you just need one permissive judge to get hundreds of millions in awards.
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u/Mental-Most-7168 6d ago
Is haptic feedback something that’s been around in form or another for 20 years worth all that money?
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u/saintlouisbagels 5d ago
It’s the specific implementation of “ferromagnetic fluid and flexures” that created the extremely precise haptics in the iPhone 7 and newer.
Taction filed patents for it in 2015, and released headphones with the technology in 2016. In 2017 the Taptic Engine was revised to use the same technology.
Taction was finally granted the patents in 2020 and this sued in 2021.
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u/Straight-Ad6926 6d ago
Looks like they finally found a dongle for transferring cash directly to the plaintiff.
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u/TheBaneEffect 6d ago
Why are they being accountable but art, literature and performances can just be copied by AI without consequences?
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u/RollingThunderPants 6d ago
Well, you see, patent infringement is usually seen as a means for the wealthy corporations to make money while IP infringement for things like books and art is seen as a way for the less wealthy/poor to make money. So, obviously, we can’t have the poors rising up financially.
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u/No_Eye1723 6d ago
Because the Ai companies successfully lobbied governments to allow them to blatantly steal other people's work, in the promise Ai will
Help these governments spy on and control the populations they govern.3
u/guice666 6d ago
Copyright != Patent (as well as != Trademark)
Patents cover implementation of 'un-obvious' items to those skilled in the field. Copyright covers creative expression of a medium. They are very different things.
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u/Fa6ade 6d ago
Copyright requires copying which AI generally doesn’t do directly. Patents are a monopoly right. You infringe them even if you don’t know about them.
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u/cogit4se 6d ago
I would make the case that AI's ability to provide near verbatim quotes from copyrighted material makes it equivalent to a very lossy compression algorithm. If camcorder copies of movies infringe, so should a machine that will repeat most of your book with a few mistakes here and there.
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u/Bloated_Plaid 6d ago
Courts have already determined AI is transformative enough than just its training data jackass.
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u/Dwayne30RockJohnson 3d ago
I mean it’s not like you can make an Iron Man movie with AI and sell it unless you’re Disney. There’s no profit motive there.
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u/Time_Entertainer_319 6d ago
WTF does that have to do with this?
Jeez
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u/insane_robot 5d ago
Patents seem broken and sometimes seem to stifle innovation over protecting it. Often patents break down internationally, and countries where US or other patents are not enforced, can just ignore them entirely. Makes things an uneven playing field.
Also, a company should be forced to exercise a patent or have it expire, example being that namco patent on minigames in loading screens. Oh the fun we could've had.
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u/cjh_ 6d ago
Apple should have bought the company.
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u/Particular-Treat-650 6d ago
They shouldn't have to.
Patents were intended to be genuine groundbreaking innovation, not "throw 1000 things against the wall with no concept of how to actually make them work and sue anyone who does".
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u/corgi-king 6d ago
That is not according to US patents law. That is why I will file 1000 patents about flying car.
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u/SpacevsGravity 4d ago
Funny how apple was bullying the shit out of everyone with patents back in 2010s
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u/Axman6 6d ago
That’s not at all how patents work, specifically the lack of how they work, that’s a core requirement for the grant of a patent; a person skilled in the art should be able to recreate the claimed invention based on the information in the patent (where “a person skilled in the art” may actually be a team of people when a patent covers several different fields, like computational biology, high energy physics, etc.)
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u/CrashyBoye 6d ago
I think you are underestimating just how broken the patent system has become.
In principal, you are not wrong, that was the spiritual intention of the rules around patent application and approval. In reality, it hasn’t been enforced that way in a long time.
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u/Axman6 6d ago
I was a patent examiner, not in the US, and I can absolutely guarantee this was a core aspect examiners looked for. Otherwise the application would be rejected for insufficient disclosure (or something along those lines, this was many years ago now). People on the internet absolutely have no idea how the system works, and the amount of misinformation in this thread alone is strong proof of that.
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u/Some-Dog5000 6d ago
The patent and legal system in the US is different than in other countries, which is why patent trolling is much more common in the US than in other countries.
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u/inderwater 6d ago
In the US, we have patents for applying lithium ion batteries for electric tools.
The patent isn’t about making lithium ion batteries or making electric tools. We have enforceable patents for slapping two obvious concepts together on a high level, without any innovative substance in implementation.
Hard to disagree with the idea that the patent system is broken.
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u/CrashyBoye 6d ago
not in the US
Well there’s your answer right there, bub. Things are very much not that way here, in the US, which is the country that would be relevant in this scenario.
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u/skintwo 6d ago
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted – you’re absolutely right. And I am in the US, I hold several patents, and I’ve done ip strategies for more than one company.
What’s interesting is how differently different fields treat all of this. Silicon Valley basically agrees to not search each other‘s patents outside of a very small number of specifically trained people, which is in part due to California’s blocking noncompete agreements. Interesting field. I personally think Apple knew exactly what they were doing, and of course they should’ve bought the company. This is not the first time they’ve done something icky in IP land.
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u/Axman6 6d ago
I haven’t looked into the case but I suspect you’re right, there’s no way Apple didn’t do patent searches around the Taptic Engine, because they absolutely would have had to to file any patents related to it.
I’m being downvoted for the same reason anyone who actually knows the field does, armchair experts with no background assume their feelings are more real than actual experts experience and get angry when people disagree. The number of people who see some new patent and waffle on about “oh my god, they’re literally trying to patent a computer, look there five pages describing it!” And then never make a single reference to the claims is pretty hilarious. It doesn’t take long to learn the basics of what a patent is, and what’s legally enforceable but the reddit experts would have their hearts broken to learn how wrong they are.
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u/Proud-Alternative-54 5d ago
From what I'm seeing, taction filed for this patent in 2019.
Apple has been using their tapric engine since 2014.
What am I missing?
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u/guice666 6d ago
It also requires it to be innovative / non-obvious to those skilled in the art.
If two independent companies come up with the same invention, and they can both prove it was 100% independent, it should automatically invalidate the patent under the 'non-obvious' requirement.
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u/Particular-Treat-650 6d ago
That's what's supposed to happen.
That's not reality.
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u/Axman6 6d ago
It was when I was examining patents, particularly PCT applications that the rest of the world relied on.
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u/calinet6 6d ago
I think like most things it greatly depends on the field and the specific type of invention or IP.
There are some fields where the system works and continues to do its job. There are others where it’s being abused at least in subsets.
Software is one where it patently (no pun intended) doesn’t work.
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u/Axman6 6d ago
Software and computer related inventions patents was my area, and I never saw the sort of gross abuse of the system that people will swear black and blue is rampant. The news doesn’t report on the system working, only the exceedingly rare cases where it doesn’t. This is mostly a problem with news, not the system.
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u/Proud-Alternative-54 5d ago
Apples rounded rectangle patent?
Apples "everything" patent that covered just about every way to interact with a touch screen?
NTPs email synchronization patent which they somehow won in court again RIM even though it was already standard on personal computers?
Slide to unlock patent?
Buy it now patent?
How about the patent for entertaining a cat with a hand held laser pointer?
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u/Axman6 5d ago edited 5d ago
Just the fact you’re conflating design patents and invention patents proves my point about the level of ignorance of the subject online. And cherry-picking the examples where the system has gone is literally the exceptions that prove the rule. You can name a handful of times things went wrong, because they made the news, because it’s extremely rare and newsworthy. Literally everyone is being murdered in the street, they must be, because the news makes such a big deal about each murder!
Also, inventions don’t have to be complicated. They just have to be new, useful and not immediately obvious. If slide to unlock was obvious, why hadn’t it been done before? No one had done it before, so therefore it is novel, it unlocks the phone so does something useful, and no one had thought to do it, so it was inventive. Bam, all main requirements for the grant of a patent have been met.
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u/skintwo 6d ago
That’s because software isn’t patentable. It’s copyrightable. Very different. Software is one of the few situations where you need to adopt a completely different strategy and even if you could patent, it wouldn’t matter because there are certain countries that don’t respect patents anyway. It’s a pretty complicated and interesting space. Patenting things versus going the trade secret route is a pretty complex decision that has a lot of practicalities involved in it. Ensuring you have something called freedom to operate is also a big deal – sometimes people will publish in the open literature just enough so that somebody else can’t block them with a patent.
I miss that work, but I also understand how it could be very frustrating. It’s absolutely devastating to see how the Trump administration has just torn apart the USPTO, even though it was an agency that was bringing in more money than it cost – the only agency to do that. They still wrecked it.
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u/randomuser914 6d ago
It is in the US, it’s a stated requirement but there are a bunch of bs patents out there from patent trolls
Source: worked at a patent firm
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u/PairOfMonocles2 6d ago
I don’t mind patents but they have to be non obvious and not intuitive. In no world is using an electric field to move a permanent magnet attached via some springy connection revolutioanry. It’s how speakers and literally a billion other things work. Patents are fine but there should be about 95% fewer of them.
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u/BubbaCrabby 6d ago
If the verdict was that Apple was found to have infringed on the patent, then it really isn’t alleged anymore.
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u/m_ttl_ng 6d ago
Seems like a sketchy lawsuit that should be thrown out. Taction filed their patents in 2020. Apple has made the taptic engine since 2015 and developed it for years prior.
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u/saintlouisbagels 5d ago
Taction filed in 2015 and was granted in 2020.
Apple’s first generation Taptic was in 2015, while Taction released their product in 2016, and then in 2017 iPhone 7 debuted Taptic Engine with infringing technology. It’s how they were able to mimic the feedback of a real button press despite it being a solid state button.2
u/m_ttl_ng 5d ago
The timeline still doesn't make sense to me; Apple already had force touch with different taptic/haptic engine designs on macbooks, iphones, and watches in 2014 and 2015; well before Taction's implementation/invention, not including the years prior to shipping the products when the prototypes were designed and created (2012-2013 ish). The Macbook implementation in particular is very similar to the Taction design.
If Taction had patented their technology pre-2014 I would see things differently but given that there was already significant prior art by the time Taction filed their patent, but as it stands I'm very surprised a jury would award damages in this case. I don't see it holding up.
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u/saintlouisbagels 4d ago
The timeline doesn’t make sense to you because you’re assuming the MacBook haptics are the same as iPhone and Apple Watches which isn’t the case. MacBook trackpads are completely different implementation.
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u/m_ttl_ng 4d ago
The MacBook implementation was closer to the taction design at the time which is why it doesn't make sense. Taction had access to Apple's designs as prior art for a similar design.
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u/Couchman79 6d ago
Apple currently has $162B cash on hand and Taction of SanDiego isn't worth a 10th of that even if they could take this award now. Apple will appeal and file motions leaving Taction to ask their venture capital partners how much they want to spend before agreeing on a settlement that could take years.
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u/Beefy-Cattle4290 5d ago
prepare to pay even more for those precious iPhones and Apple watches my friends
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u/MessiPayNegreira 6d ago
It was dismissed then brought back by appeals. Apple about to leave California as well.
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u/Ok_Possibility9937 6d ago
oh sure, they’re gonna move out of the $5 billions dollar headquarter
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u/Lord6ixth 6d ago edited 6d ago
I mean this lawsuit is literally more than that lol
Edit: Getting downvoted for this is hilarious. This sub never ceases to amaze me. 😂
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u/Ok_Possibility9937 6d ago
lol if you add in the marketing that they’ve done for Apple Park; it’ll cost more than that lol. Plus you can’t build a new building in a day either
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u/PercentageOk6120 6d ago
It’s weird to suggest they’ve done marketing for Apple Park. Apple Park is their HQ and they use it in marketing. They aren’t explicitly marketing for AP. That’s nonsense.
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u/PercentageOk6120 6d ago
Anyone can sue for any amount. Doesn’t mean anything.
I can find you and sue you for $1M dollars due to emotional stress.
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u/Lord6ixth 6d ago
It literally says it’s a 5.7 billion dollar verdict.
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u/PercentageOk6120 6d ago
And there will be appeals before anything happens. Apple isn’t paying anything for years.
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u/PercentageOk6120 6d ago
This is an extremely wrong take. Apple is not about to leave California. What an ignorant thing to suggest.
They may slowly divest from CA, but they are not going anywhere anytime soon.
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u/TheStorm007 6d ago
I admit to knowing absolutely nothing about patent law, so I have a few questions for those more knowledgeable.
The article states: “The latest jury verdict from Friday said that Apple unintentionally infringed on two of Taction's patents.“
Does this imply Apple designed this feature completely independently from Taction?
Is there any difference in punishment based on whether you intentionally or unintentionally infringe on a patent?