Jury Hits Apple With Record $5.7 Billion Verdict Over iPhone and Watch Haptic Patents

The little taps and buzzes you feel on an iPhone or Apple Watch just cost Apple $5,721,961,750, at least on paper. A federal jury in San Diego found on Friday that Apple infringed two haptics patents owned by Taction Technology, a small company that makes vibration-based audio gear.

It is the largest patent verdict in US history, and it lands on the hardware Apple calls the Taptic Engine.

What the jury decided

Taction's patents, US Nos. 10,659,885 and 10,820,117, cover tactile transducers that produce vibrations people can feel, roughly in the 40 to 200 Hz range. Seven jurors in the Southern District of California deliberated across parts of two days after a trial that opened around September 14, and returned the verdict at about 1:15 p.m. Pacific, CNBC reported.

They found infringement on two claims of one patent and one claim of the other. They also rejected Apple's argument that all three claims were invalid.

One finding matters a lot for Apple's final bill. The jury said the infringement was not willful, which means the judge cannot triple the damages.

A case Apple once thought it had won

Taction sued in April 2021, accusing Apple of selling devices built on its vibration technology without a license. The complaint history even alleges Apple bought and reverse-engineered two of Taction's Kannon headsets.

Apple looked safe in 2023. Judge Todd W. Robinson excluded Taction's technical expert, Dr. James Oliver, read the patent claims narrowly and handed Apple dismissal and summary judgment. In August 2025 the Federal Circuit revived the case, ruling that the lower court had abused its discretion on the expert and misread the claims.

"We waited five and a half years," Taction's lead counsel Lance Yang of Quinn Emanuel said, adding the team was happy the jury vindicated the company's patent rights.

Apple says the tech is not even the same

Apple told AppleInsider it strongly disagrees with the verdict and called the damages entirely unsupported by the facts. The company argues the Taptic Engine works in a fundamentally different way, says Taction's own testing of Apple products confirmed that at trial, and says it will appeal.

The case now goes back to Judge Robinson for post-trial motions. Apple is expected to ask him to slash the award or order a new damages trial.

Why $5.7 billion may shrink

Apple has a long record of giant patent losses that later melted. Awards to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (about $500 million), VirnetX ($625.6 million), Optis ($300 million) and Caltech ($1.1 billion) were cut or wiped out on appeal, and the $634 million Masimo verdict from November 2025 faces the same road.

Courtroom pressure on Apple is piling up anyway, from UK developers chasing a £2 billion App Store claim to this haptics fight. For now, Taction holds a record verdict and Apple holds a long list of reasons to think it will never pay it in full.