Before the Taction lawsuit, Apple was previously hit with another patent infringement lawsuit from Immersion. The company filed a complaint against Apple, also accusing it of patent violations with haptic tech found in iPhones, Apple Watches and MacBooks, but eventually settled for an undisclosed amount. More notably, Apple is in the midst of another patent infringement battle surrounding its Apple Watch and a feature that tracks blood-oxygen levels. In November, another federal jury ruled that Apple has to pay $634 million for violation patents from Masimo, but the tech giant is similarly planning to appeal this jury verdict.

Seems like a pattern here. Fuck Apple

Well patenttrolling ist a thing that is pretty common nowadays so as a big distributer you will have a lot of these lawsuits

Taction actually invented and sell this technology though, they aren’t just squatting on IP they bought. Not every patent lawsuit was filed by a troll.

Patents have no right to exist, can’t lock down an idea

The original justification for patents at least had some logic to it. In exchange for progressing the state of the art and telling everyone else how your new invention works you get a period of market exclusivity. There was/is the option to not patent ideas and keep them as trade secrets instead, at the risk of others figuring out your idea.

Unfortunately for all of us 20 years is a really long time for exclusivity at our current tech development pace and in no way are patents consumable information for laypeople. The nonsense filings that get granted and all the lawyers involved have turned it into yet another tool only available to the wealthy.

The idea was giving inventor time to recoup their inventing costs and earn a wage, before copy cats swamped the market. The patent length is too long nowadays

patents should exist, but only for a year or two if you aren’t using them.