> 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.

A dollar or two? Per device that infringes?

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.

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.

> 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!

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.

Tell me you’re not so thick

Goomba fallacy, they're not the same people

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.

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.