Both sides in the biggest patent case in American history filed their next moves within a week of each other, and they point in opposite directions.
Taction Technology went back to the court on October 19 asking for more money on top of its $5.7 billion win, including an ongoing per-unit royalty on iPhones and Apple Watches that would run until September 2035. Apple filed on October 13 asking the same judge to throw the verdict out entirely.
Neither motion has been ruled on. Neither one changes a single feature on the watch on your wrist today. But together they show how the two sides are positioning for what happens next.
What Taction Asked For
The jury's award covered sales from April 26, 2021 through March 28, 2026. Taction's new motion argues the case did not stop at that cutoff, so it wants compensation for the roughly six months of iPhone and Apple Watch sales between the end of the damages period and the verdict in September. The per-unit figure it proposes is derived from the jury's own award.
The motion also asks for prejudgment interest at 7% a year, calculated from the royalties Taction says should have been paid since April 2021, plus interest after judgment. Its argument for that is blunt: "The size of the jury's award is no reason to withhold interest."
Then comes the part that matters most for hardware buyers. Taction wants a running royalty from September 26, 2026 through September 24, 2035, the day the asserted patents expire. Under the request, Apple would file quarterly sales reports and pay within 30 days of each quarter's close.
The per-device rates are redacted in the public filing, so there is no way to put a dollar figure on the annual cost yet.
Which Watches Are Named
Taction is not just asking for money on products the jury already saw.
The motion names the iPhone 18 Pro, the iPhone 18 Pro Max, the Apple Watch Series 12 in both sizes, and the Apple Watch Ultra 4, and argues they are not materially different in the relevant features. Its evidence is teardowns and testing by its own expert, which is the same kind of testing Apple is simultaneously attacking in its own filing.
There is a certain symmetry to that. In 2011, in the Apple v. Samsung case, Apple argued that damages should extend to newer products not materially different from those already found to infringe. Taction now cites that argument back at the company.
So the practical consequence, if the judge grants any of this, is a per-unit cost attached to nearly every current iPhone and Apple Watch sold in the United States for the next nine years, with the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 sitting directly in the line of fire.
What Apple Asked For
Apple's motion, filed October 13, asks for judgment as a matter of law or, failing that, a new trial on infringement, validity and damages.
Its language is unusually sharp. Apple told the court the award was "untethered to any evidence at all" and amounted to "impermissible guesswork on a massive scale." Its core argument is that Taction never showed the jury what the patents were actually worth, so the jury invented a number. Apple also argues its Taptic Engine works differently from what the patents describe, and that one of Taction's experts used a testing method invented for the lawsuit rather than the method set out in the patents.
There is a supporting detail that Apple is leaning on hard. Before the verdict was read in September, Judge Todd Robinson reportedly told the lawyers he was "not sure that the figure that appears on the verdict form is what the jury meant to convey." If a judge says that on the record about a $5.7 billion number, it is going to end up in a post-trial brief.
Apple has also said it will appeal regardless of how the judge rules.
Why the Two Motions Are Not Symmetrical
It is tempting to read this as a stalemate. It is not, and the difference matters.
Apple's motion attacks the foundation. If it succeeds, the verdict goes away, gets reduced, or goes back to a new jury for a damages retrial. Taction would get nothing extra, because there would be no award to build on.
Taction's motion assumes the foundation holds. It is a request to expand the upside while the downside is still being contested. Granting it would not require the judge to agree with Taction on the merits of infringement, only that the verdict as written extends to sales the jury did not calculate and to models the jury did not see.
Both motions can be denied. The more likely path, based on how large patent verdicts behave, is that the damages number gets cut or retried and the case grinds on toward the Federal Circuit, which already revived it once when it vacated Apple's 2023 summary judgment win in August 2025.
What This Means for Your Watch
Concretely: nothing this week, and probably nothing this year.
There is no injunction. Apple keeps selling iPhones and Apple Watches with the Taptic Engine exactly as they ship today. Nobody is disabling the tap on your wrist. The haptic motor inside the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 is not changing because of a filing. If you are buying either one anyway, the Apple Watch Series 12 and the Apple Watch Ultra 4 both ship with the current haptic hardware, and nothing filed this week changes that.
The realistic outcomes remain a settlement well below $5.7 billion, a damages retrial, or an affirmance after a long appeal. Apple has been through this shape of case before: its blood-oxygen fight with Masimo produced its own verdict, its own interest order, and an appeal that is still running in parallel.
What has changed is the ask. A verdict is a number written on a form. A royalty running to 2035 with quarterly reporting obligations is a business arrangement, and that is what Taction is now formally requesting from the court. If a judge ever signs it, it stops being a headline and starts being a line item in Apple's cost of goods on every Apple Watch it sells in the US.
Bottom Line
Taction asked a San Diego federal court on October 19 to add roughly six months of iPhone and Apple Watch sales, 7% prejudgment interest and an ongoing per-unit royalty from September 2026 through September 2035 to its $5,721,961,750 jury win, naming the Apple Watch Series 12, the Apple Watch Ultra 4 and the iPhone 18 Pro as products that should carry it.
Apple asked the same court on October 13 for judgment as a matter of law or a new trial, calling the award "impermissible guesswork on a massive scale."
Neither motion has been decided, the verdict is not yet a final judgment, and Apple says it will appeal either way. The case is Taction Technology, Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 3:21-cv-00812, in the Southern District of California. If you are shopping for an Apple Watch, none of this should change your decision, though it is a reminder that the original verdict is a jury's number rather than a final bill.
Sources: reporting on Taction Technology's October 19, 2026 motion in Taction Technology, Inc. v. Apple Inc., S.D. Cal. No. 3:21-cv-00812, including the requested damages period from March 28, 2026 to the September verdict, the 7% prejudgment interest request, the proposed royalty running from September 26, 2026 through patent expiry on September 24, 2035, the quarterly reporting terms, the redaction of the per-device rates, and the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 named in the motion; reporting on Apple's October 13, 2026 motion for judgment as a matter of law or a new trial on infringement, validity and damages, including Apple's characterization of the award as "untethered to any evidence at all" and "impermissible guesswork on a massive scale", its criticism of Taction's expert testing method, and Judge Todd Robinson's reported comment before the verdict was read; and the court record of the September 25, 2026 verdict, the non-willfulness finding, and the August 13, 2025 Federal Circuit decision vacating and remanding the district court's summary judgment of noninfringement.
