US jury says Apple owes record $5.7B in haptic technology patent case

Like my Mac's trackpad ? Can someone ELI5 how it works ? It's gotta be magic-adjacent cos when the machine locks up, the trackpad is deader than a doornail.

Apple has sold over 3 billion iPhones and 4.5 billion iPhones, iPads, and iPods together.

$5.7B seems low if every one of those devices infringes.

If it’s iPhone 6s and later and all watches (for taptic input), that’s around 2 1/3 billion phones and 1/3 billion watches, so even just $2/device gets you into that range.

One is arguing over the legal application of publicly field information, the other is literal espionage, which not only impacts non-public trade secrets and insider (i.e. stock implications) information, but also raises questions about external agents secretly making actions that could undermine operations.

Nobody goes to prison for patent infringement, but you absolutely can for the latter.

There isn’t one mind. We are unique individuals with different opinions. Opinions of an individual can even be contradictory!

Tell me you’re not so thick

That said, we are talking about patents here, which are sometimes their own minefield of bullshit.

For example, Having to deal with a jury that may or may not be able to discern (Especially how a patent is written nowadays) versus an alternative but non-infringing design that accomplishes the same thing, and/or being able to properly discern similarly alternative 'prior art' from before the patent existed.

I don't know how guilty Apple is, or isn't, to be clear, but I remember how close to 25-ish years ago, a paintball company named Smart Parts managed to snatch up certain patents and then bully most of the industry into either paying them royalties or ceasing manufacture of electronic paintball markers, even despite the presence of prior art [0] and in many cases a very different fundamental design [1].

Or, as another curiosity, the whole thing where Doom 3 only got EAX support to keep Creative Labs happy, about them holding a patent on Z-Fail that Carmack didn't know about when he independently discovered it. And hell, the irony is, the technique is still instead known as 'Carmack's Reverse'.

Or, I remember the time I was at a company and I got to sign patent rights away for a dollar. The overall concept was so vague, I had to cringe in every meeting around describing the so-called 'novelty'.

tl;dr - patent 'infringement' is a murky field, and certainly different from hoovering up material protected by copyright, regardless of your opinions on current copyright laws (I do think they are way way way too long, also I think patent law has changed for the worse in the last 20-ish years.)

[0] - Specifically, there was a patent for a US Navy 'Pneumatic machine gun with photo cell interrupted circuit' that was actually listed as a prior art citation on the Smart Parts Patent, but most of the companies that were truly non-infringing were also too small to have the cash to fight in court.

[1] - The original Smart Parts markers used a mechanical/electrical switch, board controlled air valve to move bolts and hammers back and forth, but they would even go after manufacturers that used a mechanical solenoid and hall effect sensor to do the trigger pull. i.e. Smart Parts markers were designed for electronic valves from the start, whereas many of the other manufacturers pursued, the 'electronic' upgrade was just a different Grip and trigger setup.

The aspect of "you are granted a monopoly on a technology for a period of time" is something that is especially bad.

But what got those engineers in the same room in the first place?

What got them in the same room in the first place was them being the only group of people (most likely) working on a specific piece of enabling technology that they believed would be rewarded by the market and adoption AND they needed to make a living in the mean time (getting paid to do that work.)

A patent is the best thing we’ve collectively come up with to allow said group / company to invest the time and money in advance to making that technology and wants to risk/trade 20 future years to collect profit on the work they do now.

If you don’t like the game, get better at it.

So the article doesn't explain why it was appealed, then found shady on appeal.

it's a weird article, worth reading.