Company sues Apple for patent infringement over iPhone browser

A company with one employee is suing Apple Inc., for using its Web browsing technology. The company claims the iPhone browser uses many of its patented ideas.

EMG Technology LLC was granted a patent this October for mobile browsing. EMG was founded by Gottfurcht, a real estate developer with one employee. He and two other co-inventors created the idea for this patent. The patent covers methods that reformat Web pages to fit TV screens and mobile devices. It also covers manipulating those Web pages using zooming and scrolling techniques. The lawsuit claims Apple’s iPhone browser uses their patented ideas, and the company is now seeking damages. They filed this lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Tyler, Texas. For now, EMG is only suing Apple even though many companies like HTC, Research in Motion (BlackBerry), Nokia and others use a similar technology to browse the Web on a mobile device. Apple declined to comment on the lawsuit. If they win the case against Apple, they will likely file suit against others as well, because almost everyone uses similar technology in the mobile browsing market. Recently, Gibson’s firm won a $570 million verdict for its clients in a patent infringement case against Medtronic Inc. This case looks similar to the case of NTP against Research in Motion (RIM), which was a prolonged battle with RIM. In that case, RIM settled and paid $612.5 million in damages.