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What a needle in a haystack that Apple found this guy's drawings! And as a result we got the Newton, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. And all the other PDA's and smartphones that came along aping Apple's start.

Imagine the world where none of those things existed because Apple didn't steal that guy's brilliant engineering :)
 
Then suing shouldn't be a headline since it's nothing new other than making money and protecting their stuff

Yup. I am fully against the legislative branch of our gov't imposing themselves in judicial proceedings such as this.

This guy will lose unless the judge is a raging Apple hating maniac.
 
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Apple 1983

Ah, yes, the "Bashful" tablet and dock!

1983_apple_bashful.png

Created as a mockup exercise by Frog Design, the same folks who worked on the Apple IIc and IIe, and some Macs.

Jon Ive says that in 1997 he was convinced that Jobs was going to fire him and bring back Frog Design... but says he talked his way out of it.
 
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One thing that can be done that would change this dumb sue-happy American mentality is if you cannot prove your case and loose it you must pay what you requested to the other party. All of this sue everybody non-sense would stop over night. Also it does seem that the guy confused Apple for Palm LOL
 
One thing that can be done that would change this dumb sue-happy American mentality is if you cannot prove your case and loose it you must pay what you requested to the other party. All of this sue everybody non-sense would stop over night. Also it does seem that the guy confused Apple for Palm LOL

It looks to me as if American law is based on the Wild West Poker tournaments.

Even if you have nothing, you can bluff and if you have enough money and can keep raising the stakes, you'll eventually get the opponent to pass, as they can't afford to keep bidding.

Add to that the exorbitant fee structure which always forces one to settle, if saving money is the objective.

Unless you have deep pockets or a legal department on staff any law suit isn't worth it.


Even if you win, you may not be able to collect your" damaged"

Now, Floridaman, that's a trip in itself. Probably has brain damage from inhaling a hanging chad some time ago.
 
lol I love it when people crawl out of the paint work to try and get a slice of that money cake, no matter how weak their claim. $10bn is very greedy for a patent that's not even close to what Apple sell today.
 
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This is an utter waste of the courts resources and they should put this guy on the hook for all of the courts and Apple's costs to respond to it. The picture was a work of fantasy because looking at it he kind of took all the cool stuff he could think of and put it in the drawing with no thought of technically how it could even be possible. I worked on mobile devices back in that timeframe and much of the is fantasy and still is.

  • Look at the size of the rechargeable battery. Even today there is no technology that is that small for a battery to power this thing.
  • Solar panels? Seriously... total fantasy.
  • A hard drive that size? The iPod eventually had a tiny hard drive but it was never really used in phones. It was used in some of the clamshells but Apple never made one.
  • The diskette drive in the picture is a) ridiculous, and b) completely not to scale as it would have taken up most of the one side, and its mechanical workings would have consumed the entire inside of the shell making it impossible again to do.
  • So about the only thing in this that resembles anything to do with an iPhone is the backlit display.... which by the way isn't touchscreen here so that still doesn't resemble an iOS device.

I would think that to infringe on something, it needs to at least be feasible to even create it and if technology today can't do it 20 years later then its fantasy.

When I was in middle school in the 70s, I liked to draw cool fantasy cars, trucks, boats, etc.. This picture resembles something like that which a kid dreamed up after watching a Star Trek episode.
 
If given the choice of buying a lottery ticket or taking these drawings and suing Apple, I think I would lawyer up and sue. There is about as much chance of this paying off as the lottery but the payout would be way bigger. Get one of those lawyers that you don't have to pay unless you win and sit back and pray.
 
... am I reading this article right? Because it sounds like he filed a patent that was later declared abandoned because he didn't actually pay to process his filing. He also failed to register a copyright on the design so he has no copyright nor patent claim on the designs.

So what is his lawsuit over, exactly? It sounds like he has no legal path toward any infringement claim.

Only that Microsoft BOUGHT DOS from its developer...
 
"... 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."

Even if his design was close, which it's not, I detect a major flaw in his legal ground here.
 
If given the choice of buying a lottery ticket or taking these drawings and suing Apple, I think I would lawyer up and sue. There is about as much chance of this paying off as the lottery but the payout would be way bigger. Get one of those lawyers that you don't have to pay unless you win and sit back and pray.


I Hope Apple countersues for every penny it takes them to respond to this BS, including even the cost for representing a motion to dismiss. Not even a real patent.
 
"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."


HA HA and this is the reason this shouldn't even be allowed to go to court. Guess what a small company forgot to patent dos as well and it worked out fine for MS. This guy is an idiot.
DOS wouldn't be patented, as far as I know - it would be copyrighted. And while registration helps strengthen them, copyrights are automatic.
 
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