“Apple could be in for a bruising legal fight with rival Creative over the technology used in iPod music players,” Alfred Hermida reports 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.”
“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,” Hermida reports. “Mr Sim was in London for the launch of the Creative Zen Vision: M in time for the seasonal Christmas rush. The gadget is a direct competitor to Apple’s iPod video. It bears a striking resemblance, and is about the width and weight of the previous iPod model. But Mr Sim denied the company had copied the design, saying it had been working on the look for more than a year. ‘”We are focused on the technology… This is still a technology marketplace. This is the key difference between a technology company and a branding company,’ he said, taking a side-swipe at Apple’s successful marketing campaign for its iPod.”
Full article here.
“Apple could not be very excited about paying royalties on its popular device, but it is clear that Creative will make a bid for a cross-licensing arrangement at the very least,” Red Herring reports. “Analyst Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, believes the strategic way for Apple to play this challenge is to go the hardball route. ‘Getting a patent agency to say you have a patent is one thing, but getting a court to say that it is enforceable is something else,’ said Mr. Kay. ‘It would pay for Apple to hang in through litigation. If it takes three years to settle, Apple would’ve made millions in the interim. It would make more sense than settling and paying millions in back royalties right off the bat.’”
Red Herring reports, “Mr. Hoo did not indicate whether his company had begun patent and royalty negotiations with Apple. But at the time Creative was awarded the patent, Mr. Hoo gave a timeline of events that showed Apple was on his company’s radar. ‘By January of 2001, we announced that we had already sold 100,000 NOMAD Jukeboxes,’ he said. ‘The Apple iPod was only announced in October 2001, 13 months after we had been shipping the NOMAD Jukebox based upon the user interface covered by our Zen Patent.’”
Full article here.
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