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Florida Man Sues Apple for $10+ Billion, Says iOS Devices Copy His 1992 Drawings
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It looks like he invented a Newton. Except that was being manufactured by 1993.
Maybe pay the application fees next time, twit? If I was king for a day, this guy would pay Apple's court costs.
Maybe pay the application fees next time, twit? If I was king for a day, this guy would pay Apple's court costs.
It quite clearly is not phone sized but laptop dimensions. The keyboard and the disk drive are a giveaway. You can't patent a laptop and then say it's an iPhone.
His sense of drawing proportion is way off, for sure.
He marks the dimensions as 4" wide, by 7" tall, by 1.25" (?) thick.
But then he depicts a 3.5" disk drive as only taking up like a fifth of the 7" length... instead of half.
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No, and that's a large part of the problem. Baseless lawsuits can take years to slowly move through courts, depending on how much money the plaintiff wants to spend. I know a small business owner who's been involved with a suit for over 10 years. He's "won" the suit twice in court and had the case dismissed several other times. But the plaintiff keeps appealing or refilling. And when he was told that he could not bring suit again for the same thing he changed the accusation and then had his wife file the suit.
Surprised the court hasn't tossed it out on principle that the patent is expired. Want some good humor? Google expired patent royalties. All Apple has to do is take it to the Supreme Court where they will uphold their years past of not giving royalties on expired patents. Doubt this guy can last that long with money to pay his lawyers on a losing case like that.
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Florida resident Thomas S. Ross has filed a lawsuit against Apple this week, claiming that the iPhone, iPad, and iPod infringe upon his 1992 invention of a hand-drawn "Electronic Reading Device" (ERD). The court filing claims the plaintiff was "first to file a device so designed and aggregated," nearly 15 years before the first iPhone.
Between May 23, 1992 and September 10, 1992, Ross designed three hand-drawn technical drawings of the device, primarily consisting of flat rectangular panels with rounded corners that "embodied a fusion of design and function in a way that never existed prior to 1992."Ross applied for a utility patent to protect his invention in November 1992, but the application was declared abandoned in April 1995 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office after he failed to pay the required application fees. He also filed to copyright his technical drawings with the U.S. Copyright Office in 2014.
While the plaintiff claims that he continues to experience "great and irreparable injury that cannot fully be compensated or measured in money," he has demanded a jury trial and is seeking restitution no less than $10 billion and a royalty of up to 1.5% on Apple's worldwide sales of infringing devices.
Ross v. Apple, Inc. was filed with the Florida Southern District Court on June 27. The case number is 0:2016cv61471.
Article Link: Florida Man Sues Apple for $10+ Billion, Says iOS Devices Copy His 1992 Drawings
[doublepost=1467208631][/doublepost]He will loose as Apple already had the Newton and PARC had already made a functional iPad like device with all features he "dreamed up" and other small devices before both. Funny hes talking backlit LCDs before they were possible likely a complete fraud and drew this up recently.
Florida resident Thomas S. Ross has filed a lawsuit against Apple this week, claiming that the iPhone, iPad, and iPod infringe upon his 1992 invention of a hand-drawn "Electronic Reading Device" (ERD). The court filing claims the plaintiff was "first to file a device so designed and aggregated," nearly 15 years before the first iPhone.
Between May 23, 1992 and September 10, 1992, Ross designed three hand-drawn technical drawings of the device, primarily consisting of flat rectangular panels with rounded corners that "embodied a fusion of design and function in a way that never existed prior to 1992."Ross applied for a utility patent to protect his invention in November 1992, but the application was declared abandoned in April 1995 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office after he failed to pay the required application fees. He also filed to copyright his technical drawings with the U.S. Copyright Office in 2014.
While the plaintiff claims that he continues to experience "great and irreparable injury that cannot fully be compensated or measured in money," he has demanded a jury trial and is seeking restitution no less than $10 billion and a royalty of up to 1.5% on Apple's worldwide sales of infringing devices.
Ross v. Apple, Inc. was filed with the Florida Southern District Court on June 27. The case number is 0:2016cv61471.
Article Link: Florida Man Sues Apple for $10+ Billion, Says iOS Devices Copy His 1992 Drawings
I sort of doubt Apple will have any court costs on this one, since it'll likely get thrown out all together.
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He can't. Technically his patent was never filed since he failed to pay for the application fees 22 years ago. Either way, this BS joke of a lawsuit will get tossed out after 17 seconds in the court meeting.
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That is IF, a big a** if, that his lawsuit is even considered for a case. Otherwise, this isn't gonna get far past the judge's ruling for file.
And suing against Apple for their current iPhone 6 models claiming to look like his drawing from 23 years ago (which it doesn't)...looks more like a Palm PDA which may have probably existed before he even came up with this garbage fan art. No doubt in my mind that he probably copycat Blackberry or Palm all those years ago, tried to steal their idea but was too cheap to pay for an app fee that got his patent tossed out 21 years agao and hasn't been known ever since.
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[doublepost=1467223838][/doublepost]Go sue Nokia... 9300 to be exact!
He can't sue if he never filed a patent in the first place plus his drawing looks nothing like anything I've seen in my life and I'm a late 80s kind of guy. Palm looks nothing like that crap drawing nor does Blackberry or Nokia and if Apple did steal the idea, how come 0% of it isn't in the iPhone design? No hardware keyboard, no disc/memory drives, no integrated stylus (Samsung, watch out), no nothing. This nonsense is a pure waste of time, just another patent troll who forgot to pay his dues for the past 25 years.
His claim stinks of desparation.
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Yep, he has no patent. Just a copyrighted diagram from 2014.
Although, hmm... I suppose even his aborted patent application could count as prior art, since it's on the record. Not that it would help him.
It's possible that, since he wasn't an engineer, he had no idea that white LEDs did not exist yet. Red, green or yellow LED backlit LCDs were around, though.
A project called Newton began in 1987, but it was more about a full sized tablet like device, akin to the Knowledge Navigator concept. Here's what a prototype of that Newton version looked like even in 1993:
The other, smaller, handheld production Newton came along later. According to Wired's history, based on interviews with the people who did the work, "Newton was conceived on an airplane. That’s where Michael Tchao pitched the idea to Apple’s CEO, John Sculley, in early 1991."
In any case, he's not suing over the Newton. He's suing over the iPhone, iPod and iPad general aesthetics, apparently. And they don't look anything like any Newton
I didn't think I needed to put a /s tag on a joke post about digging up old drawings as a kid
Yes, let's hope his lawsuit doesn't go anywhere. Otherwise people will be coming out of the woodwork!
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Prediction for this thread:
I project 633 votes (to bashes) against Ross, 8 for Ross.
Another thread where it would be an old Apple patent or Apple drawing in which Apple is trying to challenge someone for bringing something they drew or patented to market: 633 votes for Apple, 8 votes for the other entity.
At least, we're consistent around here
Shhh, you might get reported as a troll for saying something like that.
Incredible. I should dream up some future technology without actually putting any effort into making it a reality and hope on the off-chance that something vaguely similar is created in the future so that I can wait for the market to mature and sue one of the largest companies producing said concept.
You are correct and there is such a requirement patent laws all over the world. This guy's claim is just gibberish for any number of reasons.
I love the "mini diskette" feature. Might be useful for storage.Lol. Dude, not even close.
Can't believe Apple still hasn't offered that optional cellular antenna though!
Ratchet ass Florida, back in the news again
To hell with it, I'm suing Apple, Samsung, and LG for 857.57424467633466764 million dollars. B/c f*ck it, why not
To hell with it, I'm suing Apple, Samsung, and LG for 857.57424467633466764 million dollars. B/c f*ck it, why not