COURTS - Jobs to testify in Apple option case - Sources say the SEC has subpoenaed him in the backdating trial of his company's ex-counsel.

The subpoena should not suggest that Jobs is suspected of wrongdoing, according to the people, who asked not to be identified. The subpoena is not a public record.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment. Marc Fagel, the SEC's associate regional director in San Francisco, said it was routine for the SEC to subpoena witnesses as part of a trial's discovery phase, but he declined to say whether Jobs had been subpoenaed.

Legal experts said it wasn't surprising that Jobs would be questioned in the government's case against Nancy Heinen, Apple's former chief counsel.

According to the SEC, Jobs was the recipient of one stock grant in question and helped pick the dates in a second grant.

Jobs most likely will face questions from lawyers for both Heinen and the SEC about his knowledge about how stock option dates were picked, including meetings he attended.

The SEC has accused Heinen, who left Apple in 2006, of fraudulently changing the dates of stock option grants to boost their value and instructing an underling to alter company records to hide the action.

Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple admitted last year that the company had improperly backdated stock options over a six-year period starting in 1997. The company took $84 million in charges to correct its accounting.

The company has said that Jobs did nothing wrong because he didn't understand the accounting laws that applied to backdated stock options.

The SEC said it would no longer investigate Apple, but it has not ruled out continued scrutiny of Jobs.

Companies issue stock options to employees to encourage them to stay and help make the firm a success.

But in the last two years, hundreds of companies have been swept up in stock option backdating scandals when it was learned that firms were looking back for a date when the price was lower to issue stock options. The maneuver was designed to boost the value of the options to recipients.

Backdating itself is not illegal, but hiding it from investors and regulators is.

In August, a federal jury in a criminal case in San Francisco convicted Gregory Reyes, former chief executive of Brocade Communications Systems Inc., for his role in backdating stock options. Reyes will be sentenced Nov. 21 and could face 20 years in prison.