Apple Hit With Record $5.7 Billion Haptics Patent Verdict
Apple Hit With Record $5.7 Billion Haptics Patent Verdict
The Spin
The breathless headlines about a multibillion-dollar payday ignore how patent litigation actually works. Massive jury awards against tech giants get slashed or tossed on appeal almost every time, and a finding of no willful infringement signals that this was never a case of deliberate theft. Expect years of appeals and a final number that looks nothing like the one making news.
A jury of seven ordinary people examined the evidence, rejected every invalidity defense a trillion-dollar company could buy and sided with the small inventor. Smaller companies that pour years into genuine engineering breakthroughs deserve to be paid when a giant builds those ideas into hundreds of millions of devices. Waiting five and a half years for justice is long enough.
Metaculus Prediction
There is a 50% chance Apple will sell a $4,000 iPhone in August 2034, according to the Metaculus prediction community.
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