Apple’s iPhone has once again found itself in legal hot water. This time it isn’t over a brand name or a battery but about a patent concerning the device’s innovative touch-screen keyboard.
Florida-based firm SP Technologies has filed a suit in a US court claiming the innovative keyboard on the iPhone infringes on a patent it holds on a similar keyboard.
It is understood that Apple news site AppleInsider dug up the SP filing from 2000. The patent says the company developed a “method of providing a user interface for receiving information from a user using a user immutable graphical keyboard linked to an input area.”
The suit was filed in Texas last Thursday, which has by accounts become a destination of choice for technology patent suits.
SP is understood to be seeking compensation for iPhones sold, as well as an injunction against the continued “willful and deliberate” use of their intellectual property.
In January, networking technology giant Cisco sued Apple over the “iPhone” brand name, a trademark Cisco obtained in 2000.
By John Kennedy
