Florida Man Sues Apple For $10+ Billion, Says He Invented iPhone Before Apple (macrumors.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via MacRumors: A Florida resident that goes by the name of 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. MacRumors reports: "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." MacRumors commenter Sunday Ironfoot suggests this story may be "The mother of all 'Florida Man' stories." Apple has been awarded a patent today that prohibits smartphone users from taking photos and videos at concerts, movies theaters and other events where people tend to ignore such restrictions.

Comments

Re:5 years too late

[msauve]

Alan Kay did this in 1972.

Re:Good luck!

[Hylandr]

Even though I detest Apple, they have prior art by about 8 years.

The Apple Newton

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:5 years too late

[tlhIngan]

There is a certain karmic justice in Apple having to formally address an idiot who thinks a slab with rounded corners is worthy of intellectual property, given that apple has asserted the same.

Except, Apple's rounded corners patent was a DESIGN patent. As in it was looks. You had to have a device with rounded corners, AND a grid of icons AND a row of icons that's static. See the "AND"s? Android by default had none of those. The default Android look had rounded corners, a row of icons that was static, but NOT a grid of icons (ever wonder about the clock widget? Natch).

Design patents also only last 5 years. You can actually manufacture a phone that looks exactly like the iPhone 4 or 4S right now and Apple cannot do anything - the design patent has expired.

In fact, Apple's rounded corner patent has also long expired.

This guy's patent is actually a UTILITY patent. If it's actually valid, it would cover ALL smartphones on the market - there isn't an exception that would exclude any phone on the market.

Re: 5 years too late

[dsparil]

Apple has a long list of design patents for the iPhone. These specificly only cover cosmetic elements. The US is the only country in the world that uses the word patent for this. In other countries they are called registered designs.