After Robert Keyes watched a man pass out in a ride queue at Disney-MGM Studios, he had an epiphany, he said: Theme park visitors do not have to stand in line.
So, according to a patent lawsuit Keyes filed this month in federal court in Orlando, he sent a letter to Disney executives in 1991 describing a system that would allow some theme-park visitors to wait in a "standby" line but give others a ticket to return later and avoid the wait.
A top Disney executive sent him a letter back a month later, telling him the idea wouldn't work and would result in "more guest inconvenience," according to Keyes' lawsuit.
Nearly a decade later, in 1999, Disney introduced FastPass, an automated system that gives visitors a ticket so they can skip the long lines at its parks' most popular rides. The invention has been copied across the industry.
Now Keyes alleges that Disney stole his idea, and he is seeking credit and unspecified damages.
"After Disney told me this thing didn't work, that it wouldn't work, and that it was an inconvenience for the customer, they went out and patented it," said Keyes, who owned a small textile company in Sarasota before moving to Tennessee a few years ago.
A Disney spokeswoman said Thursday the company was still evaluating the lawsuit and would not comment further.
In an interview Thursday, Keyes said he has been to Walt Disney World maybe 50 times, but his last visit was in 1997. Last October, while baby-sitting his grandson in Sarasota, he said, he came across a Travel Channel special on Disney's FastPass program.
"I said, 'Doggone it! That's the same doggone system,' " he said. He found Disney's FastPass patent -- granted in 2001 -- on the Internet, dug out the old letters, and contacted a lawyer. Keyes and his lawyers would not provide copies of those letters Thursday.
It is not the first time Disney has been sued for allegedly stealing an idea.
In 2000, jurors concluded that Disney had stolen the idea for its Wide World of Sports complex and ordered the company to pay $240 million to two businessmen who had pitched a similar idea to the company years before.
Disney is a frequent target of lawsuits alleging intellectual-property theft. In the past, it has been accused of stealing the idea for Epcot as well as for magazines and movie scripts.
