Apple Sued Over iPhone Browser

SpuriousLogic writes "A Los Angeles real estate developer is suing Apple for patent infringement over the way the iPhone navigates Web sites. The suit, which was filed on behalf of EMG Technology, seeks unspecified damages. EMG Technology is a company that holds the patents of Elliot Gottfurcht, the real estate developer, as well as Marlo Longstreet and Grant Gottfurcht. The company claims that the iPhone infringes on patent 7,441,196 — a patent that was approved only last month, after a filing process that began on March 13, 2006. That patent is for an invention that displays 'on-line content reformatted from a webpage in a hypertext markup language (HTML) format into an extensible markup language (XML) format to generate a sister site.' This sister site is a simplified version of the original site that is then displayed on any number of devices — including cell phones, EMG says."

Comments

Looking to test Bilski?

[danaris]

Let's hope this case is the first of many to be swiftly decided for throwing out the patent entirely based on In re Bilski.

Dan Aris

Re:Uh... wrong browser?

[Professor_UNIX]

If you're going to interpret rendering a page with less "features" as generating a sister site then Mosaic 1.0 is prior art for this patent. Try browsing the web with Mosaic 1.0 and you'll see a drastically different web "scaled down" for older computers by cutting out Flash, Java, Javascript, CSS... hell, it may not have even supported tables.