Thread

US jury says Apple owes record $5.7B in haptic technology patent case

77 points · 67 comments · onemoresoop

smalltorch · 1790442053 · focus · HN ↗
Wow, that's a lot of money for a little buzz. I mean what could possibly be such sacred knowledge that a vibration could even be patentable.
You spin a unbalanced thing in a circle and it creates a vibration. Make it less unbalanced and you get a smoother vibration.
1. pdpi · 1790445085 · focus · HN ↗
  The thing that is patentable isn't "a vibration". It's the exact, specific means through which you produce that vibration.
  We've gone from completely dumb eccentric rotating mass vibration to trackpads that you'd swear are actually physically clicking, or the Ice Cubes demo in in Nintendo's 1-2-Switch[0], both of which use linear resonant actuators. Those actuators are themselves a complex enough piece of technology to warrant a patent, and the techniques to simulate the feel or real physical objects using those actuators are pretty damn non-trivial as well.
  As a general rule, I find that the patent system is problematic but, within the scope of the system as it exists today, these are perfectly reasonable things to patent.
  [0]: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtlqvVfk1-Q" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtlqvVfk1-Q
  1. nomel · 1790458165 · focus · HN ↗
    It's literally a voice coil with a mass on it. Literally anyone who has ever played with a solenoid, and hooked it up to a speaker, has made one. I did it when I was a kid, decades ago, and watched it vibrate on the table and in my hand. When I tried the first haptic thing I knew exactly how they did it. It's so incredibly obvious I don't understand how it's even patentable, with all the prior "make thing vibrate with electromagnet" work.
    It's not really "high tech", it's just tuned well, with some high power for the size.
    TeMPOraL · 1790497472 · focus · HN ↗
    I think the bit where you tune it to share around a big mass around it may be the non-obvious part.
    Because frankly, I played with and disassembled many speakers of various sizes too when I was young, and one thing I internalized then is that speakers are piss poor at shaking anything except their own membrane. You can't just make things vibrate with a small speaker glued to a random thing. That's why as a kid I was not surprised to discover vibrators are spinning some unbalanced weight around - obviously that would shake things (as experienced by anyone who saw a washing machine decide to take a walk).
    nomel · 1790638236 · focus · HN ↗
    That's why I say solenoid, not speaker.

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