Apple Sued Over iPhone Safari Browser

By Ernest DokucloseAuthor: Ernest Doku Name: Ernest Doku
Email: ernest.doku@omio.com
Site: http://blog.omio.com
About: I like gadgets, loads! I like talking about them, writing about them, using them, watching other people use them though binoculars... Some would say it was an unhealthy fascination, but then I'd be all like, "Shh...," and go back to doing gadget-related things. Hit me up on Xbox Live or PSN, I'm EJStyleS. I promise to give you a good match as well as talk about things that aren't gadgets. A bit.See Authors Posts (1387)

You have to love the United States. A nation where ownership of concepts and ideas can be claimed, bought, and sold as commodities.

Where you can sit, lying in wait on top of a patent for years or even decades without any intention of making this idea a reality, rather suing the first (or richest) person who does.

LA real estate developer (and part time electronics magnate) Elliot Gottfurcht is suing for patent infringement over the way Apple’s iPhone handles browsing the web.

His company, EMG Technologies holds Patent 7, 441, 196, which was only granted in October of this year, after an 18 month approval process.

Their patent is for an (as yet surprisingly non-existent) 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 portable devices including mobile phones, according to EMG.

Despite sounding a lot more like how browsers other than iPhone’s Safari navigate the web (as it doesn’t reformat but merely resize the original site), EMG has chosen Apple as the lucky recipient of their law suit.

Obviously, this isn’t the first time the genius idea of the iPhone has been claimed as stolen by opportunistic patent holders…

Minerva Industries said that the iPhone infringed their patents for a “Mobile Entertainment and Communications device in January of this year,” followed swiftly by Klausner Technologies in March over a “Telephone Answering Device Linking Displayed Data with Recorded Audio Message”.

So…Visual Voicemail, then.

EMG is rather worryingly represented by lawyer Stanley Gibson, who managed to get a $1.35 billion payout for an L.A. surgeon over a medical instrument patent dispute in 2005. Uh-oh…

I’m all for the protection of intellectual property, but it doesn’t take much intellect to go to the patent office and scream “I CAME UP WITH PHONES!”

Actually, this might be exactly the way to get the start up capital for the OM¹O phone we need…

Tags: Apple iPhone, lawsuit, patent, phoenix wright