As Business Insider reports, Steve Wozniak will have to answer to court at the beginning of June. Connecticut economics professor Ralph Reilly claims that he and Wozniak have agreed to set up a “tech university”. The deal was sealed in 2011 with a handshake in front of the camera.
The planned educational platform should teach adults computer and other technical skills. In doing so, it should rely heavily on Wozniak’s name and reputation as a key technical executive in Apple’s early days to strengthen the brand.
New cooperation with Coder Camps angered former business partners
However, the partnership never came about. Ultimately, Wozniak entered into a very similar partnership with the education platform Coder Camps in 2017 and started “Woz U”. Reilly then emailed Wozniak and asked to become part of the company.
“This is exactly what I had in mind for the Woz Institute of Technology when I reached out to you with the idea,” Reilly wrote to Wozniak. He even replied that Reilly was “spot on” at the time. Without this “original idea” Woz U would probably never have come about.
Wozniak did not want Reilly to participate in the project, whereupon Reilly filed a lawsuit for theft of intellectual property and copyright infringement. In a separate lawsuit, he sued Wozniak for breach of contract. Reilly has already failed.
The hearing is scheduled for June 7th and should last three days.
The preceded the lawsuit
In September 2010, Reilly Wozniak first contacted by email with the idea of a tech university. As a result, a lively communication had developed, in the course of which Reilly asked the Apple co-founder if he would support a project with his name, such as the “Woz Institute of Technology”. Wozniak agreed to both the idea and the use of his name for the project in a reply email, according to court records.
On the occasion of a photo opportunity in 2011, Reilly presented Wozniak with a contract that an online school in Connecticut that was ready with Working together gave them the right to use Wozniak’s name and picture for the Woz School of Technology in exchange for quarterly license payments.
Reilly claims that Wozniak signed this contract, which he does not deny, but presents as if he was not aware that it was a binding contract. In any case, nothing came of the collaboration.
Sustainable failure lets Wozniak’s team distance
Reilly’s further attempts to reach an agreement for one with other platforms Woz Institute failed. Wozniak’s team is said to have distanced themselves from Reilly. When Reilly set up a mockup website for the Woz Institute of Technology in 2013, Wozniak’s manager Ken Hardesty requested it to be shut down and asked Reilly not to contact Wozniak directly. Since Reilly has copyrighted this website, it is now the focus of his multi-million dollar copyright lawsuit.
Wozniak’s team claims that the two never really reached an agreement on the contract and that the handshake in front of the camera was just one of countless photo opportunities that Wozniak regularly did performs with fans. That is Wozniak’s main line of defense anyway.
In court, his team claims that Wozniak is always reluctant to do business and instead leaves the contract negotiations to other members of his team. Even in his deal with Coder Camps, Wozniak contributed “no curriculum, ideas for programs, schedules or anything else” to Woz U, his lawyers write.
“One thing I avoid in life is everything that has to do with money” , also confirms Wozniak himself. He claims that he does not even know the current status of his bank account. His life is simply very different from that of most people.
