Apple Ordered to Pay Over $5.7 Billion in Haptics Patent Lawsuit
A federal jury has ordered Apple to pay over $5.7 billion to Taction after ruling the Taptic Engine infringed on two tactile feedback patents.
A federal jury in San Diego has ordered Apple to pay more than $5.7 billion in damages after determining the company infringed on intellectual property owned by Taction. The substantial award concludes a trial over the tactile feedback hardware embedded inside millions of mobile devices.
Taction, a company specializing in haptic feedback systems, originally filed the lawsuit against Apple in 2021. The firm alleged that the tech giant utilized its proprietary engineering without obtaining a valid commercial license, incorporating the mechanisms directly into consumer electronics.
Infringement Across Multiple Devices
Jurors reached a verdict confirming that Apple infringed three separate patent claims across two distinct filings, with one patent seeing two claims violated and the other seeing one. However, the panel concluded that the infringement was not willful, a distinction that shields Apple from enhanced penalties often assigned in deliberate misappropriation cases.
The legal fight centered on Apple's Taptic Engine, the component that powers subtle physical vibrations inside both iPhones and Apple Watches. As reported by The Verge, the dispute focused on US Patent numbers 10,659,885 and 10,820,117. Both registrations involve vibration-driven transducer components designed to deliver physical sensations to users as they interact with electronic equipment.
Allegations of Reverse-Engineering
During the courtroom battle, Taction claimed that Apple obtained its transducer solutions by reverse-engineering a pair of Kannon gaming headsets. Jurors ultimately agreed with Taction's assertion that its protected concepts were incorporated into Apple's mass-market devices without authorization.
Apple has stated that it plans to appeal the San Diego jury's verdict. The case will now move into post-trial motions and appellate proceedings as Apple attempts to overturn the multi-billion-dollar judgment.
