UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF ARIZONAApple cofounder Steve Wozniak has been sued for allegedly stealing a business idea from a professor.Wozniak later made one without Reilly, and said"I doubt it would have happened" without his idea.In early 2011, at a luncheon at Sacramento's Hyatt Regency hotel, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak clasped hands with a Connecticut business professor named Ralph Reilly.
The yearslong legal proceedings offer a rare window into the life of Apple's second-most famous founder, as well as how tech celebs can cash in on their reputations with lucrative deals and partnerships for decades — and how it can all go wrong. "One thing I avoid in life is anything having to do with money," he said."I just don't look at it ... I wouldn't know how much is in our bank account. My life is very different than most people."He was one of the three creators of Apple Computer Company in 1976, along with the late Steve Jobs and the lesser-known Ronald Wayne. The then-25-year-old Californian was the key engineering mind behind some of its earliest products, including the Apple I and II computers.
But for the time-crunched Wozniak, even two recorded lectures was two too many."Nothing ever came out of it," Hardesty, Wozniak's business manager, said in a deposition."It was a meeting. It was a meet and greet." Wozniak would later claim that he didn't even remember Reilly being in the room. Reilly, an associate professor of management, keeps a low public profie.
"Cool…ok to use name..." Woz replied in an email included in the court documents."I'll get more involved eventually but right now life is crammed." When that plan didn't work out, Reilly probed Wozniak about whether he should find another institution to work with, leading to a key email at the center of Reilly's eventual claim that Wozniak stole his intellectual property."I have no time so whatever you want to try," Wozniak wrote in December 2011."I figure it's your idea." By early 2013, Wozniak's team was backing away from any possible partnership with Reilly.
"My entire life I have worked to build, develop and create a better world through technology and I have always respected education,"One name not mentioned in the announcement: Ralph Reilly. Some of Reilly's accusations against Wozniak — including breach of contract — have already been dismissed by the judge. Instead, the case will hinge more narrowly on the legitimacy of Reilly's copyright claims over the Woz Institute of Technology, and whether Wozniak and Woz U infringed upon them.
He would never do that 😏