“Apple could be in for a bruising legal fight with rival Creative over the technology used in iPod music players,” Alfred Hermida writes for BBC News. “Creative boss Sim Wong Hoo has told the BBC he plans to ‘pursue aggressively’ a US patent it owns on a system used to navigate music on digital players. Mr Sim was speaking at the launch of Creative’s latest rival to the iPod video, the Zen Vision: M. Creative was one of the first to market digital music players in 2000, but has since been overshadowed by Apple.”
“In August, it revealed it had won a patent in the US for the way music tracks are organised and navigated on a player through a hierarchical system using three or more screens. The announcement prompted speculation that Creative could seek royalties from Apple, though patent cases can drag on for years. Creative chairman Sim Wong Hoo told the BBC News website that the company was already talking to various parties about the patent but refused to be drawn on specifics. ‘We will pursue all manufacturers that use the same navigation system,’ said Mr Sim. “This is something we will pursue aggressively. ‘Hopefully this will be friendly, but people have to respect intellectual property.'”
Full article here.
Blah, blah, blah, also-ran looking for a payoff following massive, utter, and total defeat in self-declared war, blah, blah, time to turn our attention back to sound cards, blah, blah, we have a bogus patent, blah, blah, buy our iPod knockoffs, blah, blah, we’re now no worse than the cheapest Chinese copycat companies, blah, blah, overshadowed by Apple is the understatement of the year, blah, blah, blah…
Advertisements: The New iMac G5. Built-in camera and remote control. From $1299. Free shipping.
Apple USB Modem. Easily connect to the Internet using your dial-up service. $49.00.
The New iPod with Video. The ultimate music & video experience on the go. From $299. Free shipping.
Connect iPod to your television set with the iPod AV Cable. Just $19.00.
Related articles:
Creative announces 30GB Zen Vision:M video-enabled ‘iPod killer’ – December 07, 2005
Beleaguered Creative waves white flag, surrenders self-declared MP3 player war to Apple iPod – November 07, 2005
Beleaguered Creative shifts promotional efforts from music players to new sound card line – September 21, 2005
Apple debuts iPod nano, iTunes 5: how are Microsoft, Napster, Real, Creative, Sony feeling today? – September 08, 2005
Creative explores new way to beat Apple iPod: patent litigation – August 30, 2005
Creative plans ‘very vigorous defense’ of iPod navigation patent – August 31, 2005
Beleaguered Creative Technology’s ‘war’ on Apple iPod not faring well – August 15, 2005
Apple’s iPod shine dims beleaguered Creative Technology’s outlook – August 08, 2005
Microsoft not buying stake in Creative Technology – August 02, 2005
Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo adds fronts to war against Apple iPod – August 01, 2005
Analyst: Microsoft could buy Creative Technlogy in bid to compete with Apple iPod – July 14, 2005
Beleaguered Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo ‘optimistic’ the company will survive ‘MP3 war’ – July 01, 2005
Beleaguered Creative may have to write off unsold stock as losses loom – June 28, 2005
Creative Tech’s reduced outlook drags on Apple, PortalPlayer, SigmaTel – June 27, 2005
Creative Tech cuts sales outlook, drags Apple down in early trading – June 27, 2005
Apple passed 20 million iPods sold milestone in early June – June 24, 2005
Apple’s understanding of what really counts makes iPod+iTunes impossible to beat – June 22, 2005
Creative Technology shares slide to lowest mark in almost two years – May 18, 2005
Apple squeezes and Creative’s profit plunges 72-percent – April 23, 2005
Apple iPod pressure forces Creative to drop prices on music players – March 01, 2005
Creative’s self-declared ‘MP3 player war’ against Apple isn’t going very well – January 20, 2005
Creative CEO: Apple iPod shuffle ‘a big let-down, worse than the cheapest Chinese player’ – January 12, 2005
Creative declares ‘war’ on Apple iPod, shoots for 40% market share of MP3 players – December 21, 2004
Creative Technology declares ‘MP3 War’ against market-dominating Apple iPod – November 17, 2004
Mossberg: Dell, Rio, Creative ‘iPod mini killers’ lag badly behind Apple iPod mini – October 27, 2004
Creative pushes to become ‘Pepsi’ to Apple’s ‘Coke’ in digital music player market – August 07, 2004
The navigation screens look sort of like the Next finder in column view.
If anything, Apple should sue “Creative” for copying the Finder’s column view.
Oh, and 1st post!
– Mark
This is how it should have read……..”‘Hopefully this will be friendly, but people have to respect intellectual property.’ And since we have no intellectual property, it doesn’t look like it will be too friendly.
I must say the audigy 2 ZS I just installed is quite a nice unit. Lawsuits? beats me.
even if they do have a patent (which I’m sure won’t be held up, prior art, etc.), how can this excuse their photocopy job on the vision:M?
Maybe “Creative” should get CREATIVE and release some compelling products.
Many patents are invalidated in court when they are found to be “too generic”. Creative’s patents will never hold up against Apple. There’s only a limited number of ways to navigate songs on ANY sort of device (computer, CD player, iPod, etc.): historically, you navigate them by song. But when music software came out, you could navigate them by album or artist or genre as well. For Creative to claim some sort of patent on this is ridiculous.
Between this Sim Wong Dog Doo and Rob “donut” Glaser, it just amazes me at the childish behavior of CEO’s of large companies. It’s unreal.
It’s like they all graduated form 5th grade and got jobs as CEO’s.
booooooooooring.
Homer.
The fact that iLounge’s RSS feed has been malfunctioning for weeks (at least in NetNewsWire at my house it has been) is way more disheartening than this dopey lawsuit threat from Creative.
Respecting intellectual property and then cloning the look of Apple’s iPod! LOL! Some people are congenitally blind to irony.
This is a nuisance issue that Apple will easily trounce in court sometime in the next decade. If you can’t beat’em, sue’em!
The thing that most people don’t realize is that patent warfare is a new and evolving fact of international business. One needs to stop thinking of patents as individual elements held like a sword over the throats of one’s enemies. Instead, patents are more and more being treated like troops on a battle field. That’s why so many companies have whole departments of lawyers doing nothing other than filing seemingly pointless patents.
As Lester Thurow says in “Fortune Favors the Bold,” there are three concepts that one needs to keep in mind when it comes to the way patents are used these days: “cluster”, “picket” and “submarine”. I suspect the Creative patent is a deliberate submarine patent attack. A submarine patent is something that everyone forgot or overlooked in a fast moving environment, and a trailing competitor sneaks up and grabs it, then uses it to torpedo the leader in that industry.
A picket strategy is to take minor variation patents out around a single core patent that the company doesn’t own. The Japanese have been good at using this one. If one can wall in a competitor from actually getting to use their patent, by patenting all of the ways that that patent would interact with other, necessary components, one can prevent them from ever getting the advantage out of the patent they own. This is often used as a way to force a competitor to license their technology to you.
The cluster patent is probably what Microsoft is trying for with its patents on ‘right-clicking with a mouse’ and a ‘menu-based software environment’. A cluster of patents around a core concept is often a defensive move to protect against a picket patent attack.
The other thing to remember is that patents are also used these days as trading chits in a massive game of poker. HP and Dell, Apple and Microsoft, have thousands of patents, often just so they can play games of mutually assured distruction against one another. If Microsoft tries to enforce the left-click patent against Apple, Apple can hold several other patents they own pertaining to the modern GUI interface over their heads.
It is a fascinating new world.
The navigation system is a list of items subdivided by various criteria – album, artist etc. You navigate that list by going up and down the list then select one, upon having done so it then displays any suboptions or plays the selected item. How else exactly would that information be displayed on a small screen? It’s just the finder or basically any other cataloguing/filing system stripped to the bone.
This sounds kind of familiar, someone stealing an interface and becoming the market leader, leaving the original left to die.
I love my iPod, but seriously, Apple isn’t always the heaven sent company from the kingdom of Heaven. If it was flipped the other way around, and Apple was suing Creative, you’d all be boycotting Creative and all associated companies, and probably making caption contests with their CEO.
Tergenev I would say it is about as facinating as the Cold war was.
This guy is as bad as Rob Glaser.
How can you have a patent on a product you never developed in the first place and never built and sold for that matter?
WRONG…
Sim Woo Hoo isn’t pursuing Apple, it’s his money grubbing scum bag attorney’s who are. They’ll just throw some bling bling Hoo’s way when they’re done.
And by the way, I can’t tell the difference between Apple’s Nano’s and Creative’s Nano’s anymore. Which one has a round scroll wheel?
I’m sorry but this patenting nonsense is going way too far. Patentiing letters of the alphabet, breathing, making lists, walking upright (although I’m not sure about Rob Glaser), DNA. I’m waiting for someone to patent front doors on houses that swing in. Then everyone will have to pay. Oh and who has the patent on eyeglasses? that one could be worth a fortune in Asia!
You know…if this patent were for a method that was so great, then Creative themselves, must be using it on the Zen, right? So, if they are using it, it must be benefiting them, right? So, if it is benefiting them, they must be selling a boatload of Zens and making piles of money. If not, then the patent doesn’t cover anything particularly important and is not worth sueing Apple over. This is kind of like sueing a light switch manufacturer because it has an “on” position and an “off” position…pretty pointless. Somebody send Sim Wong Hoo some donuts; he needs something better to do with his time.
How soon before Apple counter sues for product design patent thievery?
AND, every collection of information needs a way to navigate that info, they can’t patent that. It’s like microsoft sueing Apple for the layout of the menu bars on their respective OS’s.
It’s creatives last breath, an act of desperation.
Prior Art was obviously not taken into consideration when some moron granted this at the USPTO. Nested Folders in a graphical GUI are nothing new. Using a connected list of enclosed folders is as old as the original Macintosh at least. The display used in Windows 95-XP up from the start button is also a use of the same type of navigation.
If Apple has decent lawyers, they can get this thrown out. The USPTO ( US Patent & Trademark Office) should throw out the moron who granted this patent. He was using a Windows XP computer with the sme kind of file navigation when he was processing the patent application. Talk about clueless.
Those who lose the ability to reason start a fight.
Those who have lost the ability to be creative start a lawsuit.
Looks like they’re going to ‘aggressively pursue’ Apple on the design front as well.
Pure PR – he manages to get mentions all over the place because he’s suing Apple. Smart move, lousy product. Twice as thick as an iPod, just so you can record a few voice notes and get crappy FM radio reception? Please…
He’s also threatening the lawsuit to try and put Apple off suing him for ripping off the design of the video iPod. “You sue me, I sue you”
I just got patent approval for my concept of a wheel. I’m rich!!! I’m rich!!! I’m rich!!!