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More Legal Problems For Apple
by Paul McGoldrick
In my whole career I have only been involved in one patent dispute, and that only as an interloper trying to bring the two sides together.
That happened over a video timebase corrector fight involving a lawyer who bought patents, as a business, with a view to keeping an eye on the relevant industries for a possible infringement case down the road; he “won” most of his cases because the companies involved settled with him just to get the charges out of the way – and out of expensive and diverting court hearings. The other party, an American working for a Japanese company, was a previous boss, and friend.
The lawyer finally lost his claim because there was a determination to go for a victory by the Japanese company. A huge amount of previous art was shown to have been made before the patent involved was granted.
Although I find the morality of buying IP just to bring lawsuits rather distasteful, I would find filing for a patent in the hopes that it would be timely enough hurt a specific target to be even more distasteful. In the case I am thinking of I cannot be sure, of course, that this is what has happened – but it smells like it.
US Patent 7441196 was filed for on March 13, 2006 and was granted on October 21, 2008 to Elliot Gottfurcht, Grant Gottfurcht, and Albert-Michel Long as an “Apparatus and method of manipulating a region on a wireless device screen for viewing, zooming and scrolling internet content.”
The Abstract (and scroll down to the bottom of the Patent Office Website for the extremely long list of 76 claims) describes the Patent as, “A method and apparatus of simplified navigation. A web page is provided having a link to a sister site. The sister site facilitates simplified navigation. Pages from the sister site are served responsive to actuation of the sister site link. In one embodiment, the sister site includes matrix pages to permit matrix navigation.”
About a month after the grant of the patent, a lawsuit has begun against Apple claiming infringement by the iPhone that allows the phone to browse websites. The suit has been filed by EMG Technology, LLC. There are a lot of EMG Technology companies worldwide, but this one was formed by Elliot Gottfurcht, and although he is based in Southern California, and Apple is based in Cupertino, CA, the suit was filed in the liberal East Texas US District Court in Tyler, TX.
EMG is being represented by Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Marmaro, with the lead counsel of Stanley Gibson. He noted that Apple was the only device that they had looked at. Hmm...because it is the most popular, or most profitable? Apple is a bad boy, but RIM/Blackberry is a good boy?
Companies are only just beginning to develop the mobile equivalents of their Web sites: so, if we ever went there, our mobile site would be m.en-genius.net with content sized and formatted for the mobile screen rather than, say, VGA. The claims are that the ‘196 patent specifically covers the reformatting process and interface for these "m" sites.
Elliot Gottfurcht is best known in Southern California for his development of the 800 home Beverly Glen Park situated above the Beverly Hills Hotel, and for what is now the W Hotel in Westwood Village. His lead attorney is probably best known for his four year patent fight against Medtronic for Dr. Gary Michelson of Los Angeles, which resulted in the company having to buy the good doctor’s patents for $1.35 billion with $500 million of legal costs thrown in.
Guess Dr. Michelson’s specialty? Spine surgery… And Apple has a lot of spine when it comes to lawsuits. Watch your back, Gottfurcht!
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