is it just literally “taking too long to do something?”
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I won’t repeat what many others have said, but I’ll add that laches is what’s called an “equitable defense.” The history is that sometimes the law is unfair, so certain courts in common-law England were able to impose “equitable remedies” to make things fairer. Today, in the US, we’ve generally merged courts of law and equity, but retain some differences. (A notable exception is Delaware’s famous Chancery Court, which hears a lot of business law cases—without a jury, because historically courts of equity lacked juries.)
Nowadays, we still distinguish legal remedies (money damages) from equitable remedies (injunctions—that is, an order to DO or NOT DO something in the future, not just paying for something already done). Some cases can have both: Pay for what you did, and don’t do it again.
Some courts will say equitable defenses can only apply to equitable remedies, so you couldn’t block a damages suit with laches. But many courts aren’t so strict about that. But everyone agrees equity is primarily concerned with fairness, so if the defendant has “unclean hands,” they might not be able to successfully assert an equitable defense. For example, if you have done something intentionally and in bad faith, but the person you harmed is a bit slow in suing you for it, the court might be unwilling to use laches to protect you because you acted inequitably.
Some courts will also say that a statute of limitations precludes a defense of laches, because the legislature told us the time limit by law, so we don’t have to figure out what seems fair after the fact. I believe the Supreme Court reached this conclusion on patent law recently. But many equitable remedies don’t have a statute of limitations because they’re forward looking anyway.
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