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.
> trackpads that you'd swear are actually physically clicking
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.
It's the same technique of the "3D touch" the iPhone 6S had, though that was discontinued. Capacitive sensors measure microscopic changes in the glass, as it slightly flexes when you press it. Then a haptic motor does a little kick to simulate the feel of it being pressed down.
They've been doing this since 2015 or so. Prior Macs didn't click on the top 1/4 of the trackpad, because there was basically a "hinge" there and the glass would actually press on a physical button.
Fun fact, the other thing that can cause this is a Bluetooth mouse in a backpack that is being clicked continuously. Confused me to no end for fifteen minutes.
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.
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.
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.
A civil dispute over patent details (which is basically business as usual in technology) is not the same thing as orchestrating a criminal corporate espionage ring to exfiltrate inside information.
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.
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
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.
Or just don't protect trade secrets (the entire point of patents is that trade secrets are harmful to society), and require all software to come with source, the right to have someone change/fix it for you, and the right to share your changes/fixes under a right-to-repair umbrella. Maybe retain a limited (e.g. ~5 year) distribution monopoly on the original (so you could distribute patches but not the full thing).
Source is less important with LLMs now, but it's wasteful and destructive to the planet to have everyone need to use them to reverse engineer things for no reason.
An economy built around not making knowledge prolific is obviously a bad, inefficient idea, and in the end will be our downfall.
FWIW, I think it was determined that the patent violation here was not 'willful'.
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.
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?
My issue with stuff like this is their work is not worth $6 billion dollars. Yes it takes time to develop this stuff but it isn't ground-breaking work and isn't especially novel. A room of experienced engineers, given the same constraints, would likely be able to come to the same design conclusions without much time or expense. Patents in general have this problem. A lot of it is a race to patent as much obvious and fringe-not-immediately-useful-today stuff as possible and it unfortunately works a lot of the time.
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
Yeah it's a weird case. First time, Taction agrees Apple didn't infringe. Apple found not infringing. Then why appeal? Taction's lawyer not happy? Hard to tell from teh article.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10659885B2/en?oq=us10659... claims 17 and 19
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10820117B2/en?oq=us10820... claim 16
You spin a unbalanced thing in a circle and it creates a vibration. Make it less unbalanced and you get a smoother 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
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.
They've been doing this since 2015 or so. Prior Macs didn't click on the top 1/4 of the trackpad, because there was basically a "hinge" there and the glass would actually press on a physical button.
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.
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.
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.
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
The aspect of "you are granted a monopoly on a technology for a period of time" is something that is especially bad.
We should have the same with software.
Source is less important with LLMs now, but it's wasteful and destructive to the planet to have everyone need to use them to reverse engineer things for no reason.
An economy built around not making knowledge prolific is obviously a bad, inefficient idea, and in the end will be our downfall.
Instead of patents, the government could just pay scientists who make useful things. Sure it costs government money, but so do the lawsuits.
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.
"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
So the article doesn't explain why it was appealed, then found shady on appeal.
it's a weird article, worth reading.
I wonder what it’ll be like after appeal.