• reddig33@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      How is this good news? Haptic feedback has existed since the 1970s. This patent should be invalid.

      • timochka@lemmy.zip
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        17 days ago

        The patent is not on haptic feedback. The patent is on a very specific means of implementing haptic feedback using ferrofluids and electromagnetic actuators that it is claimed (and Apple deemed it good enough to copy, so presumably truly) allows for both a smaller implementation than typical mechanical haptic feedback (i.e. the off-balance-flywheel approach of phones of old), while also allowing for low- or zero- noise compared to “speaker or piezo” based haptic feedback.

        There are a lot of shit patents in the world, but on a surface reading at least this seems sufficiently novel that I don’t see why it should be invalid. One also presumes that if Apple had any grounds to invalidate it on prior-art they would have done so.

        • reddig33@lemmy.world
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          17 days ago

          So I looked into this and you are right and I am wrong. Deleting my previous posts since there’s more to this case than just haptics.

          • timochka@lemmy.zip
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            17 days ago

            Well, all credit to you!

            Sometimes Lemmy can be surprising in a good way :^).