A lawsuit filed by EMG Technology claims the way the Apple iPhone lets users browse the Web infringes on a patent granted in October. The suit alleges that the technology the iPhone uses to navigate and display some Web sites designed for small phone screens infringes on a patent obtained by Los Angeles real estate developer Elliot Gottfurcht and two co-inventors.BOSTON (Reuters)—
Apple Inc is
the target of a lawsuit that claims a technology the iPhone uses to surf the
Web infringes on a patent filed by Los Angeles
real estate developer Elliot Gottfurcht and two co-inventors.
The lawsuit was filed by EMG Technology LLC
on Monday in the U.S. District Court in Tyler, Texas.
EMG was founded by Gottfurcht, is based in Los Angeles
with an office in Tyler, and has
just one employee.
The suit alleges that the technology the iPhone uses to navigate and display
some websites designed for small phone screens infringes on a patent obtained
last month by Gottfurcht and his co-inventors and assigned to EMG.
Apple spokeswoman Susan Lundgren declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying
that the Cupertino, California-based company does not discuss pending
litigation.
EMG has not considered suing companies such as HTC
Corp, maker of the G1 Google phone, and Research in Motion Ltd, maker of the
BlackBerry, which also produce devices that can display mobile websites,
according to Gottfurcht's lawyer Stanley Gibson, a partner with the Los
Angeles law firm Jeffer, Mangels, Butler &
Marmaro.
Mobile websites are essentially reformatted versions of ordinary websites,
with their content manipulated to be easily viewed on tiny screens.
"We haven't looked at anything other than the iPhone," Gibson told
Reuters. "That was the device that we looked at. Obviously it's very
popular."
Gibson was one of several attorneys who prosecuted a recent patent
infringement case against Medtronic Inc that resulted in a $570 million verdict
for his clients, according to a statement issued by his law firm.
(Reporting by Jim Finkle, editing by
Richard Chang)
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