Taction asks for royalties on iPhone and Apple Watch sales until 2035, plus interest, after its $5.7 billion verdictTaction asks for royalties on iPhone and Apple Watch sales until 2035, plus interest, after its $5.7 billion verdict

Taction Technology has asked the federal court in San Diego to add damages, interest and a running royalty on iPhone and Apple Watch sales to the $5.7 billion verdict it won against Apple in September.

The requests were reported by Reuters on 19 October. They come days after Apple asked the same judge to throw the verdict out or order a new trial, so the court now has both sides' demands in front of it before it has entered any final judgment.

What is Taction asking for?

According to 9to5Mac's account of the filing, Taction wants four things on top of the jury's award.

• Supplemental damages. The jury counted US sales only up to March 2026, so Taction wants damages for the roughly six months of iPhone and Apple Watch sales since. Apple World Today, citing the same Reuters report, gives the same gap.
• Prejudgment interest, meaning interest on the damages for the years before a judgment is entered. Taction proposes California's statutory rate of 7% a year, running from April 2021, the year it filed suit.
• Post-judgment interest, from the day a final judgment is entered until Apple pays.
• An ongoing royalty: a payment on every future US sale of the products, including the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4, with Apple reporting its sales each quarter and paying within 30 days of each quarter's end, until 24 September 2035.

To reach models the jury never examined, Taction borrows an argument Apple itself made against Samsung: that a royalty should cover newer products that are not more than colorably different from the ones found to infringe, which in plain terms means products whose differences do not matter to the patent. Taction says those four models meet that test. Apple denies infringing, has said it will appeal, and has not yet had the judge rule on its own motion.

Where does the 2035 date come from?

We looked up both patents the jury found Apple infringed, US 10,659,885 and US 10,820,117, on Google Patents. Each claims priority to an application filed on 24 September 2014, and Google's listing estimates each will expire on 24 September 2035, the exact end date Taction asks for. Google labels that an estimate rather than a legal ruling, but it shows the request is pitched at the patents' full remaining life rather than at a fixed number of product generations.

We also read the Samsung judgment Taction is leaning on. On 25 November 2014, Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California ordered Samsung to pay ongoing royalties on infringing products and on those "not more than colorably different therefrom", starting after the judgment. Because Apple asked for and won that wording, we read it as awkward for Apple to argue now that the principle is unsound. It can still argue that the Taptic Engine in this year's models differs from the ones tried.

Our take

The interest request is the part that could add the most money quickly, and it is easy to underestimate. Taction's figures are not public, so we worked out a rough size ourselves. If the award built up evenly between April 2021 and March 2026, and simple interest at 7% ran on each slice until the end of 2026, the interest alone would come to about $1.3 billion. That is an estimate built on our assumptions, not Taction's number, but it shows why reports of hundreds of millions are, if anything, cautious. A court did exactly that in another Apple case this month, when a judge put $184 million of interest on top of Masimo's Apple Watch award.

The royalty is the part with a longer reach. If the judge grants it, the case stops being a single bill and becomes a cost on every iPhone and Apple Watch Apple sells in the US for almost nine more years, unless Apple changes the Taptic Engine enough to escape the colorably different test. APPDOOK expects that design question, not the headline figure, to decide how much this case finally costs Apple.

For owners and buyers, nothing changes today. Every request, as reported, is about money; none asks the court to stop Apple selling anything, so the vibration you feel on an iPhone or Apple Watch is not at risk from this filing. The order of events matters more than any single number. We expect the judge to settle Apple's motion before Taction's, since a new trial would leave nothing to add interest to. Only if the September verdict survives does the court enter a judgment with whatever interest and royalty it allows, and only then can Apple appeal to the Federal Circuit.