[Lurking Libertarian]

Ross applied for a utility patent to protect his invention in November 1992, but the application was declared abandoned in April 1995 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office after he failed to pay the required application fees. He also filed to copyright his technical drawings with the U.S. Copyright Office in 2014.

He has no patent and no copyright, ergo no legal claim. His lawsuit will be dismissed in short order.

[Boogieman]

Actually, you don’t need a copyright or patent to have a claim, though they help a LOT.

Your intellectual property is yours whether you file the necessary paperwork to protect it or not. It will just be much harder to prove in court that it IS your intellectual property if you didn’t file the paperwork.