A Florida man is suing Apple for US$10 billion (A$13.4 billion), claiming that he invented the iPhone, iPad and even the iPod back in 1992.
Thomas Ross claims that the Apple devices infringe a patent he filed at the US Patent Office 14 years ago. He said he filed the patent for an “electronic reading device”, providing hand-drawn technical illustrations of the gadget that he envisaged would be used for reading and writing.
One of his devices, which has been described as looking like a cross between a house brick and a Microsoft tablet PC, “embodied a fusion of design and function in a way that never existed prior to 1992”, according to Thomas Ross’s lawyers.
Ross applied for a patent in 1992, but his intellectual property was declared abandoned after he failed to pay the application fee.
