Los Angeles based real estate company EMG Technology LLC has filed a lawsuit against Apple Inc. claiming that a technology the iPhone uses to surf the Web infringes on a patent obtained last month by founder Mr. Gottfurcht and his co-inventors.

The lawsuit, filed by EMG Technology LLC on Monday in the U.S. District Court in Tyler, Texas alleges that the technology the iPhone uses to navigate and display some websites designed for small phone screens infringes on a patent obtained last month by Gottfurcht and his co-inventors and assigned to EMG.

Mobile websites are essentially reformatted versions of ordinary websites, with their content manipulated to be easily viewed on tiny screens.

According to Mr. Gottfurcht's lawyer Stanley Gibson, EMG has not considered suing companies such as HTC Corp., maker of the G1 Google phone, and Research in Motion Ltd., maker of the BlackBerry, which also produce devices that can display mobile websites. A statement issued by his law firm said that Mr. Gibson was one of several attorneys who prosecuted a recent patent infringement case against Medtronic Inc. that resulted in a $570-million (U.S.) verdict for his clients.