EMG Technology on Monday announced it has filed suit against Apple in the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in the Tyler Division. The suit claims that Apple infringes an EMG patent in the way that the iPhone navigates the Internet.
EMG’s, patent, filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and given U.S. Patent number 7,441,196, describes an “Apparatus and method of manipulating a region on a wireless device screen for viewing, zooming and scrolling internet content.” The patent was filed on March 13, 2006, and was granted on October 21, 2008.
The “‘196 patent,” as the suit describes it, sports 76 individual claims. One of the claims covers the display of Internet content reformatted from HTML to XML on mobile devices. EMG describes that as “the industry standard currently displayed by the iPhone.” Additional patnet claims include the technology for manipulating a region of the screen for zooming and editing.
“The ‘196 patent covers the simplified interface of reformatted mobile content to provide optimum viewing and navigation with single touches on a small screen,” said Stanley Gibson, a partner at Jeffer, Magels, Butler & Marmaro, the law firm that filed the suit on behalf of EMG Technology.
Representatives from Apple were not available as Macworld sought comment.