Apple Faces Patent Lawsuit Over the Browser in the iPhone
A month after being granted U.S. patent No. 7,441,196,
a company in Los Angeles called EMG Technology is suing Apple for “the
way the iPhone navigates the Internet,” according to a press release.
The suit did not specify the damages EMG is seeking, but the company
has hired a serious gun: Stanley Gibson, one of the lead trial
attorneys who won the $1.35 billion patent infringement lawsuit against
Medtronic.One of the patent’s inventors is Elliot Gottfurcht, who is best
known as a Los Angeles real estate developer. The patent covers methods
for reformatting Web pages onto TVs and mobile devices, as well as for
manipulating those Web pages using zooming and scrolling techniques.
The suit is specifically targeting the touch-screen browser on the
iPhone, but it could just as easily apply to any mobile browser,
including the one on the Android phone. The name of the patent is
“Apparatus and method of manipulating a region on a wireless device
screen for viewing, zooming and scrolling internet content.” It was
filed on March 13, 2006.