- Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak has been sued for allegedly stealing a business idea from a professor.
- Ralph Reilly approached Wozniak about making a branded tech school in 2010, but it didn’t pan out.
- 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.
According to Reilly, the pair had agreed to establish a futuristic “tech university,” sealing the deal with an on-camera handshake. It was an ambitious plan for a twenty first-century educational platform to teach adults much-needed technical skills, using Wozniak’s name and legendary status as cofounder of the world’s most iconic computing company to brand the institution.
But Wozniak has a different recollection. The veteran engineer often known as “Woz” has said the meeting was one of dozens of photo-ops he conducts on a near-daily basis with his fans and admirers – so mundane he doesn’t even remember the photograph being taken.
