Jury awards Taction more than $5.7 billion in Apple haptics patent case
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The Facts
- A federal jury awarded Taction Technology more than $5.7 billion from Apple.
- The jury found Apple’s Taptic Engine infringed two Taction patents.
- The Taptic Engine provides haptic feedback in iPhones and Apple Watches.
- Apple said it will appeal the jury’s verdict.
- Apple said it does not use Taction’s technology.
- Taction sued Apple in 2021 over the haptic technology.
- The jury found Apple’s patent infringement was not intentional.
Context
What technology is at the center of the case?
The case concerns Apple’s Taptic Engine, which produces vibration-based haptic feedback in iPhones and Apple Watches; the jury found it infringed two Taction patents. CNA CNBC
Where Left and Right agree, and where they split
Left and right largely agree on this one.
- Where Left and Right agree
- Both frame the $5.7 billion verdict as legitimate: Taction's patents were infringed regardless of intent, and Apple should pay unless its appeal succeeds.
- Where Left and Right differ in emphasis
- Both treat the verdict as enforcing patent rights against a giant — one stresses the power imbalance smaller inventors face, the other treats property rights as absolute regardless of size.
- Why they won’t converge
- The divide is about values — whether a jury verdict primarily tests whether a small patent-holder's property can be enforced against a giant, or whether it demonstrates that unintentional infringement findings can still be litigated away indefinitely.
How left and right read it
When a smaller company's patents are taken up into a product line as vast as the iPhone and Apple Watch, a jury verdict is one of the few places that power gap gets tested at all. Taction waited from 2021 to get that hearing. A jury found the Taptic Engine infringed two of its patents and set the number at more than $5.7 billion, and Apple, while denying it uses the technology, will appeal — as it may. But if even an unintentional finding can be litigated indefinitely, what is a patent worth to anyone who isn't Apple?
A patent is property, and property that cannot be enforced against the largest firms is not property at all. A jury found the Taptic Engine infringed two Taction patents and set the figure above $5.7 billion, and it did so while finding the infringement was not intentional — so the question is not Apple's state of mind but whether someone else's invention ended up in iPhones and Apple Watches. Apple may appeal, as due process allows. If the verdict holds, Apple pays.
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