California Inventor who sued Apple over the iPhone sues over the iPad

In October 2008, Californian Elliot Gottfurcht was granted a patent for
"Apparatus and method of manipulating a region on a wireless device screen for viewing, zooming and scrolling internet content."

One month later he sued Apple for infringing on that patent.

The complaint was over 76 different ways that Apple's iPhone displays Internet content. According to Gottfurcht's attorneys, the patent claims include the way HTML is reformatted to XML on mobile devices, and the way the iPhone browser zooms and scrolls.

That case is still open in the District Court, Eastern District of Texas, but Gottfurcht's company, EMG Technology LLC, announced today that it will expand the suit to include the iPad, along with the iTunes Store, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Apple TV.

"Apple refuses to pay reasonable royalties for its use of EMG's patents relating to navigating Internet mobile websites and applications, which were filed in 1999, several years before Apple's mobile patents were filed," Gottfurcht said in a statement today. "Perhaps the reason lies in a statement Steve Jobs made in the 1996 documentary called Triumph of the Nerds, "We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas."

The trial date is set for September 12, 2011.