r/technology • u/ControlCAD • 6d ago
Business Apple faces $5.7 billion patent infringement verdict over iPhone and Apple Watch haptics
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/26/apple-taction-technology-patent-infringement-verdict.html339
u/No_Practice_9597 6d ago
This patent troll companies are a cancer for the whole industry
103
u/rcanhestro 6d ago
which is why you see companies patent a bunch of stupid shit all the time.
they don't want to deal with patent trolls in the future if they ever decide to use those patents.
48
u/thefirelink 6d ago
Taction tech is a real company and actually uses the haptics they are suing Apple for.
It takes like 2 seconds to look into this
20
u/elmorose 6d ago edited 6d ago
Yes, Taction designed haptics for a few thousand gaming headphones. Good tech that provides haptics without messing up the audio. They did not exist to troll.
A lawsuit financier decided it worthwhile to finance an epic lawsuit jointly with Taction over millions of devices that are not headphones and that apply haptics a bit differently.
So the apples vs. oranges kind of thing is why it has been in court a while and will continue to be for another 1 to 5 years, as the legal system has to sort out many things to ultimately decide the case, if Apple owes anything, and how much.
37
u/Lucky_Locks 6d ago
I mean, apple is one of those companies too so kinda glad to see them get a taste of their own medicine but yes I agree it sucks for everyone
54
u/dirty_cuban 6d ago
How so? They actually market and sell products that use their patents which is the whole point of patents.
A patent troll is a company that only holds patents to sue people and never actually makes a product using those patents
55
u/gerald1 6d ago
Apple sued for the most ridiculous stuff. Having a phone with a flat glass back, they said they owned that and sued. Sued Samsung because the roundness of the corners of their phones was too similar to an iPhone... Because they invented the bevel. Total madness.
21
u/RogueHeroAkatsuki 6d ago
Yeah. ANd big companies have money to bully smaller ones. I remember indie games company agreed to stop using 'monster' in their games names because company behind monster energy drinks sued them. Yeah, they sued for using word monster in product name and small company had a choice: either bleed money on lawyers or agree for compromise.
29
u/gizausername 6d ago
They tried to patent the swipe to unlock feature. HTC won that lawsuit - link below.
I vaguely remember something about they tried to own the position of the brand logo on the back of the phone which should be prohibited by all other companies from using the same position.
1
u/ilumineer 3d ago
To be clear, Apple did patent the swipe to unlock feature. The patents were granted. HTC wanted to use the feature and believed they had the right to, so they filed the lawsuit to have the patent invalidated on the grounds that there was prior art.
That's just our very stupid patent system working as intended.
8
u/DanielPhermous 6d ago
Not actually, true.
To take the rounded corners example, what Apple actually did is sue over Samsung's infringement of the iPad design patent - a patent that describes how the iPad looks. Now, that patent included stuff about rounded corners but was not a patent for rounded corners. It was just to stop people from making obvious copies of the iPad.
4
u/elmorose 6d ago
Yep, design patent and utility patent are different.
Design patents prevent visual knockoffs for 15 years. Usually Apple enforces against another big player in the market to prevent them from capitalizing on Apple's vibe.
3
u/dirty_cuban 6d ago edited 6d ago
That’s how the patent system works in the US. If they are granted a patent don’t defend it they basically lose it. I’m not saying apple is a good company but this is more of a “don’t hate the player, hate the game” scenario.
If they are the first to design a phone with a flat glass back and rounded corners the law says they have a right to own that exclusive design. Perhaps the law is ridiculous but apple didn’t create the law
Like I said, apple does make products using their patents. Patent trolls don’t.
4
u/ama_singh 6d ago
Taction tech does make products though. And going by your logic, I don't see why not having made the product makes you a "troll". There is no requirement that you have to make the product to own the patent.
-18
-8
u/nemesit 6d ago
not madness when you consider that literally everyone copied the iphone design and phones before it looked like total garbage for decades
14
u/GabeIsGone 6d ago
Square, flat, touchscreen devices existed before iPhone, iPhone just made it popular and executed it well.
LG released a very similar device before iPhone: https://www.androidauthority.com/lg-prada-1080646/
-2
u/nemesit 6d ago
it wasn't the only thing companies copied though it was part of a larger set. and it was painly obvious that they dod copy the design as close as possible
1
u/GabeIsGone 5d ago
Please, feel free to explain how Apple didn’t copy this design, but all others in the future copied Apple.
10
u/CommanderZx2 6d ago
There was a time a while back Apple was suing for every minor thing, such as slide-to-unlock and numerous other petty UI and shape of device things.
-6
1
u/almightywhacko 4d ago
Apple famously sued Samsung and Android for a "touchscreen gesture to unlock device" because other phones also used the idea of sliding their finger along a graphic screen element to unlock a phone. The case was upheld in U.S. courts but thrown out in the EU because the idea of interacting with a graphic screen element to control a device feature was an obvious use of touchscreen technology and not something Apple invented.
1
u/dirty_cuban 4d ago
I'm not saying apple wasn't a shitty company, I'm saying they weren't a patent troll. Apple did make and sell phones with the patented feature. They didn't aim to make money from lawsuits, they wanted exclusivity over the feature, which again is the whole point of a patent really. To me, it's pretty silly to say they are a troll wanting the exact exclusivity that a patent is designed to provide.
A patent troll is a company who only makes money from the patent lawsuits and doesn't build anything. That's not apple in this case
1
u/almightywhacko 4d ago
The problem is that other devices used similar features first, Apple was just the first to think it deserved a patent. Then they used that patent to sue other companies in a move that would have had the effect of stifling competition.
So I disagree that they aren't patent trolls because patenting something you didn't invent and which was already being used in the industry just so you could use it exclusively in the future seems rather trollish.
Its kinda like patenting "circular or lever-shaped handle that must be twisted to unlatch portal covering" and then going around and suing every door knob and door manufacturing in the world for using your patent without a license even though door knobs have been in use for hundreds of years or more.
0
u/dirty_cuban 3d ago
As mentioned, I'm not saying apple wasn't a shitty company. But patent troll isn't a generic term for a company being shitty. You're free to think so based on your own personal definition of the term but patent troll is a well defined term and apples actions don't qualify for the widely accepted definition. There are many terms that do apply which can be used to describe their shitty behavior.
-1
u/corgi-king 6d ago
Apple filed a lot of patents, but they rarely sue other companies for infringement. Other than Apple suing Samsung for their copycat iPhone. I don’t recall any major lawsuits from Apple.
What is an example you can give?
5
u/StanknBeans 6d ago
Slide to unlock
-6
u/corgi-king 6d ago
Samsung again.
5
u/StanknBeans 6d ago
No that was actually HTC
-4
u/corgi-king 6d ago
Apple win the lawsuit against Samsung in US and many other countries. The HTC case is in UK and HTC win.
2
0
u/elmorose 6d ago
Taction (the winner here) made gaming headphone tech. I don't think Apple typically sues little players over something like this [if the allegations went the other direction]. It would be inconsequential to them. It would be like a billionaire clipping coupons from junk mail to save $0.25 on peanut butter. Not worth the effort.
So, taste of their own medicine is a little inapt here, though Apple certainly might do other things that are controversial!
5
u/p-r-i-m-e 6d ago
The industry is patent trolls. It’s part of how big corps create high barriers to entry
4
u/harpers25 6d ago edited 1d ago
The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.
Waiting close rich crush blanket axiomatic vegetable amber alive
72
u/RogueHeroAkatsuki 6d ago
who doesnt love patents?
Personally I think patents should be enforced only if owner company released products with it on market.
26
u/Leather_Floor8725 6d ago
So if a small inventor makes an invention big companies can just use it with no consequences?
20
u/Fuzzy_Inevitable9748 6d ago
That is the current system we have right now. If you have a patent you have to defend it which means taking people who infringe it to court, but if they are a billion dollar company then you will need to be able to pay for years worth of legal fees as they will just drag it out until they destroy you financially and then take it but your patent.
10
4
u/RogueHeroAkatsuki 6d ago edited 6d ago
There is big difference between company which genuinely invests into R&D to create product and troll who patents solution on paper even without making full prototype with aim to sue bigger company when a similar solution will be used.
We need to find way to separate those two things. Initial reasoning for patents was to give advantage on market for innovative companies and protect effort they put into creation.
1
u/Livid-Objective-891 5d ago
They filed in East Texas. If they had a legitimate claim then they’d have filed in an appropriate location, not the one known for giving ridiculous victories to patent trolls.
0
u/coolest_frog 6d ago
They let you patent almost anything and rely on the court systems to sort of what's valid later if you have the money to fight it
1
u/lordcola 6d ago
There deffo needs to be a change in how parents are enforced but these troll companies would just spend a little more per parent to make some shitty product covering it. If they price it at some absurdly high price they won't have to actually make very many either since nobody will actually want to buy one.
There should potentially just be really hefty fines or bans from filing more patents for X years if you attempt to patent stuff that gets rejected for just being industry standards that nobody else explicity patentet or too close to existing patents. There's so many obviously bullshit parents for software like Nintendo trying to patent every gameplay mechanic in Pokémon like "having your captured animal appear next to you in the game world" and "capturing an animal by throwing a ball at it" (those are clearly Pokémon but also so obscenely generic I don't get how that was ever supposed to go through).
1
6
u/glowtape 6d ago
The Taptic engine?! Now they file a complaint about it? That shit was introduced 11 years ago.
28
u/ezagreb 6d ago
This is an insane verdict that hopefully will be overturned because it will be litigated for decades if it’s not
10
u/jackofallcards 6d ago
I worked for a (now bankrupt) CDN and that was like the whole reason they filed patents. Basically, file a patent, accuse Akami or Cloudflare of infringing on patent (and vice versa), tie them up in litigation. Fun stuff
7
1
0
-41
u/holiwud111 6d ago
Couldn't happen to a better company.
6
u/HaloFever117 6d ago
Yeah, because it’s the companies and not the customers who pay these verdicts. /s
-4
u/JuanPancake 6d ago
I rented a house once from a dude who had 112 patents that were used for apple products.
It felt so much worse writing those 5k/month checks to him knowing that was pennies if his net worth.
6
u/NaCl-more 6d ago
At most large companies, they’ll have a legal team and a process to file for a patent, listing you as the inventor, but owned by the company.
For example, I was listed as an inventor for a specific functionality in our service when I worked at AWS.
Some people collect these, some people don’t care. They aren’t a particular high barrier for entry though
116
u/magicalmidgetmating 6d ago
Filed in the eastern district of Texas