A federal jury in San Diego has ordered Apple to pay more than $5.7 billion after finding that the Taptic Engine inside its iPhones and Apple Watches infringed patents held by haptics company Taction Technology.

The verdict, delivered Friday, is reported to be among the largest patent awards ever handed down against a single company — a sum equivalent to roughly two weeks of Apple's net income.

Taction sued Apple in 2021, alleging that the company used vibration-based tactile transducer technology it had developed without a license. The case centered on U.S. Patent Nos. 10,659,885 and 10,820,117, which cover transducer designs that let a device respond to a user's touch with precise vibrations. The jury found that Apple infringed two claims in one patent and one claim in the other. It declined to find willful infringement — a finding that could limit any later enhancement of the award.

Taction had accused Apple of reverse-engineering its technology from two Kannon gaming headsets.

Apple has said it intends to appeal. The company has consistently argued that it does not use the patented technology — including in a separate case this week, in which it convinced an appeals court to uphold the invalidation of a speech-recognition patent.

What happens next matters well beyond the courtroom. Post-trial motions and the inevitable appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit can take years, and awards of this size are frequently reduced, overturned or sent back for recalculation. The judgment also lands as Apple faces renewed scrutiny of its hardware and supply chain, and as smaller patent holders test whether targeting a single flagship component can produce outsized damages.

For now, the number stands: $5.7 billion, and an appeals process that will run for years.

Sources