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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 27 2012 @ 04:22 AM EDT |
Yes... Roger had designed drawings and prototypes since 1981
in the Knight-Ridder Lab. Which some years later had a next
door neighbor, that was eventually found to be an Apple
skunkworks lab. Roger was known for his tablet ideas and
seeking to collaborate with a manufacturer to build it. So K-
R could produce content for what would eventually become the
failed Newton Project.
This is all in Roger's sworn deposition taken by Apple as
supporting Samsung's contention that Roger was the true
visionary and inventor of the Tablet PC. Part of Roger's
research even from the earliest days, found that the ideal
Tablet should be around 1/2 inch thick, flat on both the back
and front, with rounded corners and no physical buttons on
the front. That it should weight between 1 and 2 pounds with
only screen side soft buttons for control!
After the Newton failure, Roger continued to demonstrate and
refine the tablet features and design traits into physical
prototypes. After his 1994 video, he personally began to
lobby Apple and other companies to build his Tablet
Invention. K-R even had attorneys discussing patenting the
idea. But Roger thought it better to not patent it, so there
could not ever be a monopoly and K-R could produce content
for all manufacturers.
When Tony Knight took over the company, after his dad's death
in 1995, he eventually canned the Tablet project few years
later. That's when Roger successfully worked with Toshiba to
build an implementation of his Tablet Design (pictures of him
with Toshiba engineers are in evidence). But at the time
touchscreens were too expensive to produce in any quantities
even for Toshiba.
When the lab was broken up, Roger had again presented his
refined designs to Apple's then Jony Ive, but met with no
response from them as late as 2000. Though Microsoft began
working on it's tablets later that year. In the meantime,
Roger's former employee Curt Stevens, began working for Apple
in 1995 until leaving to work at Disney. There is plenty of
chances for Apple to see and examine Roger's work and no
doubt Curt had shared Roger's invention as well. Even though
it was very well publicized by Knight-Ridder themselves. As
Roger wanted it in the public domain.
But yes indeed, Roger and Knight-Ridder should own the
Copyrights even though they never endeavored to apply for
patents, all the prior art produced by Roger Fidler since
1981 is already on record as evidence supporting Roger's
claims that he did indeed invent the iPad! ....in fact the
prototypes and drawings of a Tablet PC by Apple from 2002
till their 2004 Patent could be said to be an exact rip off
of his Invention!
This is why Judge Lucy Koh found Samsung's assertion of prior
art so compelling in the first place. The problem is with the
Court of Appeals forcing her ignore this evidence until trial
time!
Roger's Deposition in support of Samsung:
http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-
courts/california/candce/5:2011cv01846/239768/945/
Evidence in support of Roger's claims to have invented the
Tablet:
http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-
courts/california/candce/5:2011cv01846/239768/166/
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