Craig Rothwell, inventor of the iControlPad peripheral – which has been popping up in various stages of development since 2008, most recently running Super Mario Kart and psx4iphone – has hit out on his development blog against recently revealed Apple iPhone peripheral patents spotted by PatentlyApple.

In a post published on the 2nd April 2010 and entitled 'An extremely sinister development', Rothwell writes, “We were very very surprised to see that apple have allegedly filed a patent for our original iControlPad design some 6 months after we revealed it.”

The Apple patent was originally filed in Q3 2008, while the iControlPad first got covered by Pocket Gamer in May 2008.

“This was announced on April the 1st,” Rothwell goes on, “and at first we thought it might be a joke aimed at us, but it's now been reported on several other sites, today, april the 2nd.“

The inventors on Apple's patent application are listed as Brett Allen and Sanjay Gadkari. Gadkari appears to be a patent attorney employed by Apple.

We've contacted Rothwell for comment.