YHK - yet another hacker news clone

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

22 points onemoresoop 1 hour ago 16 comments

spacedcowboy 1 hour ago | parent

That’s not chump change, even if it’s ~1.5% of Apple’s yearly revenue…

I wonder what it’ll be like after appeal.

smalltorch 1 hour ago | parent

Wow, that's a lot of money for a little buzz. I mean what could possibly be such sacred knowledge that a vibration could even be patentable.

You spin a unbalanced thing in a circle and it creates a vibration. Make it less unbalanced and you get a smoother vibration.

bigyabai 51 minutes ago | parent

Why do people cry foul like they've lost a limb when OpenAI steals Apple IP, but then shirk away from condemning Apple stealing Taction or Masimo's IP?

The community has to pick a lane. Either IP theft is good and promotes competition, or IP theft is bad and we have to apply the law equally.

smalltorch 48 minutes ago | parent

I need more details which the article doesn't provide but I'm pretty sure vibration is common knowledge and what could the design possibly done that was so patentable

bigyabai 47 minutes ago | parent

Vibration might be, but the Taptic Engine is differentiated and trademarked as Apple's own unique feature: https://uspto.report/TM/86543432

nozzlegear 39 minutes ago | parent

Goomba fallacy, they're not the same people

eecc 25 minutes ago | parent

Like the parent wrote: one “patent” is a miniature vibrator, something like those found in cheap sex toys, the other consists of poaching people working on the frontiers of knowledge, corrupting them to steal such unique ideas for money.

Tell me you’re not so thick

andsoitis 22 minutes ago | parent

> The community has to pick a lane.

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

amelius 20 minutes ago | parent

The whole patent system sucks. It has nothing to do with reality.

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

devindotcom 21 minutes ago | parent

i assume this matter was discussed

gherkinnn 18 minutes ago | parent

That little buzz feels like a click on my Air's trackpad and like a tap on my iPhone's keyboard. Any other vibration thingy I came across feels like a vibration thingy, not like a click, not a tap.

As nobody else seems to care or is able to build the same, maybe it is worth a dollar or two. Though 5.7B is a bit much.

pdpi 11 minutes ago | parent

The thing that is patentable isn't "a vibration". It's the exact, specific means through which you produce that vibration.

We've gone from completely dumb eccentric rotating mass vibration to trackpads that you'd swear are actually physically clicking, or the Ice Cubes demo in in Nintendo's 1-2-Switch[0], both of which use linear resonant actuators. Those actuators are themselves a complex enough piece of technology to warrant a patent, and the techniques to simulate the feel or real physical objects using those actuators are pretty damn non-trivial as well.

As a general rule, I find that the patent system is problematic but, within the scope of the system as it exists today, these are perfectly reasonable things to patent.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtlqvVfk1-Q

jjtheblunt 11 minutes ago | parent

from the article, Taction themselves agreed Apple's tech was different :

"Apple's Taptic Engine is fundamentally different from Taction's technology, which Taction's own testing of Apple's products confirmed during trial," Apple said in response

nchmy 2 minutes ago | parent

if youre not going to find and quote a transcript from the trial, then i dont think sharing this self-serving quote here has any value.

hingler36 11 minutes ago | parent

I'm interested in reading more information as it comes out, but a lot of the comments claiming it's "just vibrations" are being a bit reductionist. These devices are controlled by complex algorithms, and they take a lot of time and money to create. Why shouldn't this company enjoy the same IP protections that Apple enjoys on their work?