New Hero Armed with 24-Year Old Drawing Emerges In Fight Against Apple

During the last few years, Apple has been no stranger to patent litigation over the design of its smartphones and tablets. In fact, to many of us, it seems as if the smartphone patent wars may extend into an era where no one has ever heard of an iPhone. While Apple’s feud with Samsung garners all the media attention, we here at Abnormal Use are here to tell you that a new opponent has entered the arena.

That opponent is Florida resident, Thomas S. Ross. Or, as we like to refer to him as “David” (or “Jon Snow” or “Frodo” or any other hero facing seemingly insurmountable odds). If you have never heard of Ross, you will.  According to reports, Ross filed suit against Apple in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida alleging that the iPhone, iPad, and iPod are a rip off of his idea.  That idea being Ross’ 1992 hand-drawn “Electronic Reading Device” (depicted below).

Ross alleges that he was the “first to file a device so designed and aggregated” nearly 15 years before the introduction of the iPhone. The gadget, imagined by Ross in 1992, possessed the capability for mixed media-browsing and communications and featured a touch-screen display, a disk drive, a modem and solar panels to power up the device.  s a result of Apple’s alleged patent thievery, Ross allegedly has experienced “great and irreparable injury that cannot fully be compensated or measured in money.” He will, however, settle for $10 billion in damages plus 1.5 percent of upcoming iPhone sales.

To be fair to Ross, he did, in fact, apply for a utility patent with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the drawings of his gadget back in November 1992. However, the application was declared abandoned in April 1995, for failure to pay application fees. Ross also submitted a copyright application with the U.S. Copyright Office in 2014. While we have serious doubts Ross will ever see anything close to those financial demands contained in his lawsuit, we hope this goes well for him. We still have a picture of a flying car we drew after the release of Back to the Future II in 1989 that we would love to cash-in on in the future.