A Jury Ordered Apple to Pay a Record $5.7 Billion Over a Vibration

A federal jury in San Diego found on Friday that Apple's Taptic Engine infringes two patents owned by Taction Technology, a small haptics company, and ordered Apple to pay $5,721,961,750. Apple says it will appeal. Reuters reports it is the largest US patent verdict to date. 12

The two patents are US Patent Nos. 10,659,885 and 10,820,117. Both cover tactile transducers, the parts that turn an electrical signal into a bass-frequency vibration you can feel through your skin. Taction says the Taptic Engine — the tap on an Apple Watch wrist and the click under an iPhone screen — uses that technology without a licence. Apple introduced the Taptic Engine with the Apple Watch in 2014, using a linear resonant actuator rather than the older vibratory motors. 234

The jury's answers matter as much as its number. It found Apple infringed two claims in one patent and one claim in the other, but it did not find the infringement willful — so this is a company found to have used the technology, not a company found to have copied it knowingly. The jury also rejected Apple's argument that the three claims were invalid. Seven jurors deliberated parts of two days and returned at 1:15 p.m. Pacific. 24

Getting to Friday took five years. Taction sued in April 2021. A San Diego judge threw the case out in 2023, ruling that Apple did not infringe. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit revived it in 2025, holding that the dismissal rested on an unwritten requirement that had wrongly kept out expert testimony Taction wanted to use. The trial opened on September 14, 2026. 134

Discovery in the case showed who paid for it. Taction received financing from Gronostaj Investments LLC and Kenosha Investments LP, which separate litigation identified as an indirect subsidiary of Burford Capital, the litigation funder. Apple pushed to expose that connection, and a judge threatened the funders with sanctions. 3

Apple's answer is blunt. "Apple's Taptic Engine is fundamentally different from Taction's technology, which Taction's own testing of Apple's products confirmed during trial," the company said. "Apple does not use Taction's technology, and we will appeal." Taction's lawyer said the company was happy the jury "vindicated its patent rights" after waiting five and a half years for a trial. Until the Federal Circuit — the same court that brought the case back — rules on the appeal, the $5.7 billion is a verdict rather than a payment, and it can be upheld, reduced, or reversed. 13