Apple Slapped With $2 Billion Federal Lawsuit Over Apple Watch

A Detroit woman has filed a federal lawsuit claiming Apple stole her patented idea for
a smart watch. “I was the first to put in for a patent for a ‘computer wrist watch,'” Daisy Washington-Gross said in the suit filed Friday in Eastern Michigan U.S. District Court.

Washington-Gross claims Apple’s watch infringed on her pending patent for the “Detachable Beeper Disc Digital Gym Shoe Computer Watch.” She’s demanding $2 billion.

Analysts have told Fortune magazine they believe Apple sold almost 6 million of its watches in the last quarter of 2015. Apple sells most of its watches for $299 to $749.

Washington-Gross told this newspaper she filed suit against Apple because she never had a chance to produce her watch before the tech firm came out with one, and no one from the company had contacted her about her patent. “They gave me no respect or anything, to call me,” said Washington-Gross, 67. “They just took action to create the watch.”

Lest one imagine the technology behemoth quaking in its boots over Washington-Gross’s enormous demand, it must be noted that she sued Reebok in 2000, claiming that “I invented the gym shoe.” That invention was for the “Beeper Disc Digital Detchable (sic) Gym Shoe, Disc Digital with Time/Step Sensor Scanner Devices, Mirco-Chips (sic),” Washington-Gross said in her lawsuit, a document loaded with typos and misspellings and also filed in Eastern Michigan U.S. District Court. The gym shoe suit didn’t specify a dollar claim.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment