Slashdot Mirror
Creative Has MP3 Player Interface Patent
indie1982 writes "BBC News online is reporting that Creative has been awarded the patent for the interface that many MP3 players use. The patent covers the way files are organised and navigated on a player using a using a hierarchy of menus, a system that Creative's own Nomad jukebox and Apple's iPod range use." Commentary also available at CNet. Reports trend towards an attempt to capitalize on Apple's mistake. From the BBC article: "Creative said the patent applied to its players, as well as some competing products such as the Apple's iPod and iPod mini. The patent covers how files on a music player are organised. Creative was one of the first companies to produce MP3 players but has lost out to Apple which dominates the market. The Creative announcement is the latest salvo in its self-declared war against Apple. "
First Nintendo patents insanity, now this. I don't know who patented stupidity, but I bet he is one rich man.
I like the way industry analyst talked down the threats to Apple.
However the fact is, if you're using patents held by your ever-so-slightly-competition, you're sitting on a time bomb without a LCD display telling you when it will go off, and how much damage it is likely to cause.
While Microsoft might have a more friendly relationship with Apple, Creative is certainly aggressive in competing with iPod. Creative's CEO has been openly challenging iPod's domination and this seems to be a handy weapon.
Just hope they didn't patent the built-in virus too.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
If you put the two players side-by-side Creative has clearly mimicked Apples Ipod. Anyone remember the first generation Creative players? The thing looked like a CD player! Apple has strayed very little from its initial design for its Ipod. Who's copying who?
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
The Nomad's design is an atrocity. It's so damn hard to navigate when you have 40 GB of MP3s on there....
Reports trend towards an attempt to capitalize on Apple's mistake.
So because Apple failed to patent its own interface, then that means the first one to the Patent Office doors gets to patent it?
That is *fucking* *bullshit*. If it had never been patented and already on the market then it should be impossible for Apple to enforce a patent or file for one after the fact. That would mean everyone else in the personal music player business could benefit from Apple's mistake, but not impact the purchaser. Any patent enforcement by Creative or Microsoft will undoubtedly affect the purchase price of Apple's products. They will not eat the licensing fees.
Buy giving these interlopers the right to enforce a patent on a device people have already invested money in is just one more example of how intellectual property laws in the US are screwed up royally. It is this type of situation that leads companies to file *defensive* patents that are the bane of open source development, and ultimately lead to less innovation in a particular market.
The Department of Commerce is one of the first cabinet-level offices I would shutdown 30 seconds after taking the oath as President. It does not promote commerce at all (unless you are a bottom-feeding scum lawyer).
If you fail to attend public meetings where your congressional rep shows up to discuss all of the wonderfull things they have done in D.C. and BITCH TO THEM about patent laws, they you are contributing to the problem.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
In the vein of SCO vs. Linux, it appears that in the world of downtrodden MP3 player manufacturers they've decided to follow the old cliche:
If you can't beat 'em, sue em!
Why is an MP3 UI any different from any other computer program UI? I can sort any number of MP3 UIs by foo.
Yay, someone patented a sort function that displays the output on individual screens!
I'm glad that the Patent Office employs people to make sure that no one steals that idea.
...that I can no longer purchase a Creative product due to their abuse of the patent system. They make some decent products.
This is such an obvious case of prior art that congress is going to have to step in and shake up the USPO.
...with bloody obvious patents that just mirror the real world on a computer screen or embedded device. Patent the way you select music? How do you think DJs used to organise things when they had boxes of records? Some did it by artist, some by album title and some by genre... How the f**k else would you do it? Somebody shoot the patent office for this. Patents are supposed to be non-obvious. This seems to be as obvious as you can get. It's hard to think of other ways to do it at all. Wait a minute... maybe I can get a patent on showing lists of things in alphabetical order... then I can sue everyone...
- Paul
Does this affect the iriver? I'm an iriver fanatic, and I'd hate to see Creative try to sue them and force them to waste money on paying lawyers.
Note to mods: I'm probably being sarcastic.
What kind of interface do they use for the infect operation?
Creative patent the innovative use of virii on MP3 players.
I just hope this doesn't force Apple to change the interface for their iPod. When I was shopping for an MP3 player a bit back, the iPod won because it did what I needed, and was easy to operate. I use it 90% of the time in my car with a tape adapter, and I wanted something easy to switch around songs with. I'm sure a Nomad would have ended up with me hitting a tree.
rm -rf
It's lame of Creative to patent this interface. Lame ain't an MP3.
Before everyone bitches about the US patent system or jumps at Creative, I suggest you RTFA.
It mentions that Creative filed the patent January 5th, 2001. That's a whole 9 months before the orignal iPod even came out.
...somebody put a patent on the mouse! I could be rich!
This will be resolved by writting a check.
In the best case, Appel writes a check to Creative, who will license the technology to Apple.
If Creative refuses resonable terms, which is probable, Apple with write a check to their laywers to defend the pattent (or atleast delay having to do anything about it for many months).
Failing that, Apple writes a check to the CREAF shareholders, using their $3B cash stockpile to buy Creative who's market cap is $660M.
It won't come to a buy out, but that's the worst case for Apple.
And don't forget, this coming to the party late is a new move for Apple. They are so used to innovating and having others violate their patents that they are learning to navigate the waters of a market already invented.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
As a piece of journalism the BBC report is a disgrace to that orgnaisation's claim to be the world's greatest news gatherer.
Where has this patent been granted? In the UK (the assumption given the reporting organisation)? The EU? The US? Burkina Faso? Get a grip BBC - some of us are paying for you to produce this material and we deserve better than that.
When will the stupidity stop? It seems that everybody is out to patent everything that can't be patented. Hell, I bet you Apple/Creative/Nintendo is filing a patent for my comment!
Seriously, is there even a legitimate reason anymore for the USPTO? Talk about anti-free-market and stifling innovation.
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
To any prospective Pro-Mac flamers: I strongly suggest reading the entire article and patent before jumping on the "I hate Creative" bandwagon.
Creative was FIRST. Look at the dates.
How on earth is a using a menu system to find something at all original anymore?
How about the patent for using a hierarchy of menus to find a program or program segment to run? Maybe i can get some of the outrageous license fees for our accounting system back!
If it applies to mp3 (creative) and xxx (apples format slipped mind at moment) why not txt, com, and etc? In which case prior art would seem applicable.
Everyone's slating Creative for this, but I'm waiting until they actually try to get money out of anyone for this. A lot of companies apply for patents purely to stop other people applying for one and potentially suing them.
1. Create crappy mp3 player ...
2. Loose market share to apple
3. find a way to sue apple for creating better products.
4. File a patent.
5. Find an idiot judge and idiot jury.
6.
7. Profit!
Didn't Apple go after anyone that had a windows type interface? Don't you remember the pins that Richard Stallman handed out, "Keep your lawyers off of my computer" and a snake with an Apple logo?
Isn't turnabout fair play?
Fight Spammers!
Creative Inc. seems clever here, getting one up on Steve McSmartypants at Apple -- UNTIL you consider that their patent is INSANE, and thus an infringement on NINTENDO! HA! JOKE IS ON YOU, CREATIVE SUXX0RS!
And as it goes with most wars, it's the peasants who suffer (in this case consumers.) Competition is good, using patents in a nuclear war game isn't.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
According to the article, the iPod was released some six months *after* the Creative patent was filed, and over a year after Creative had a product on the market using that patent.
Can't see why everyone's beating up on Creative for copying Apple's technology.
here's the actual patent
If I hadn't fallen victim to the siren song of the 20gig iPod in the store I would have gotten one of their nomad products instead (Which are cheaper). But there's something really attractive to the iPod that just made me want to have it.
Now I've got an iPod shuffle and I really like it. In some ways I feel locked in to apple products now, since I bought stuff off the iTunes store, and I've gotten so used to using gtkpod for everything. But that's not a problem because Apple's products are good and I am happy with them.
I do think it's interesting that Creative was able to get this patent on mp3 player user interfaces, and especially what their action will be. I hope they don't specifically target Apple, as that would make me mad at Creative. I would much rather they concentrate on making better players to get my business. If they were to come up with something more attractive than Apple's offerings, I'd just burn all my m4a's to CD and rerip them.
IMO they should really try to come up with a better design than their iPod mini imitations. Maybe there isn't a better design than the iPod but we'll never know if everyone goes around copying the iPod!
However, I'm not holding my breath. It seems corporations these days are much more focused on protecting their existing IP than creating new IP; which is very sad, especially from any consumer's point of view.
Apple didn't blunder, but in all likelihood took the correct position that a displayed representation of a heirarchical filesystem was unpatentable. After all, tree-style directory display utilities have been around since MS-DOS 2.0 (and probably much earlier).
This is so flipping obvious, it's painful. There's no patentable material here, and Apple did the right thing by not filing for one. That Creative actually managed to obtain one just serves as further proof of how monsterously fscked up the USPTO is.
Of course, we will not see either one of them agitate for patent reform.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Software patents are terrible ideas for reasons that can sometimes be hard to explain to those not in the know. The more cases we have, though, where the ridiculousness becomes undeniable, the better chances we'll have for either a reforming of the system, or for the whole mess to collapse under it's own weight.
The opinion above is fiction. Any similarity to real opinions, including facts and logic, is purely coincidental.
Here's the patent 6,928,433
Apple did not protect itself adequately before Microsoft created Windows. All of Apple's litigation regarding look and feel got tossed out of court, with MS able to continue without restraint. Apple's attorneys seem to be very good at reactive work, such as cease and desist orders, but not too good on the preventative side.
anger should be widespread across ideological grounds. this stifles progress, limits choice, and increases costs. using the law as a cludgeon is wrong, even it addresses the right issues. it will always be misused. someone's ox will always be gored. be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Sounds like the simplist solution is to make certain Creative doesn't profit from this move by............NOT BUYING ANYTING FROM THEM! OH, and don't forget to tell them WHY you're not buying anything from them. And tell your friends and family to not buy anything from them either. Get a bumper sticker that says to not buy from them. Buy a full-page ad in the NYT that says to not buy from them. Get a full body tatoo that you can sell on eBay to not buy from them. Get into one of the crowds that hang around morning TV shows like "Today" and wave your sign saying not to buy from them. Carve into a corn-field your message not to buy from them.
--
The "are you a script" word for today is approprietly enough publicly.
Can't Apple just release a newer ipod firmware to change the appearance of the ipod gui?
...and Librarians throught the US will smirk quietly in triumph.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
The problem is they'd have to patent just about everything or clear that it isn't covered.
Imagine how high the bar for entry into any technology market if you have to pay a small army of patent attorneys, clerks, paper shufflers, pencil pushers, etc., to make sure your butt is covered.
The more complex the device, and an MP3 player is a complex device, the worse this gets.
Patent reform is overdue.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Hopefully patents like this will start making the government realise just how flawed the system is. The fact that someone can be granted a patent for something as obvious as this just makes the system unusable. And it won't be until big corporations like apple start getting screwed over by these that they'll take notice.
I thought the intention of the patent system was to encourage innovation not stifle it, and that is what is happening with every company patenting anything they can in order to make money out of their rivals. Not necessarily inventing new and wonderful solutions but often just patenting existing ideas. Maybe if the patent office had more resources they would be able to reduce some of the obvious patents that are granted but then again maybe not.
And lets face it, the solution to browsing a music list by using multiple menus is a fairly obvious solution that shouldn't be protected by law. Computers are basically designed for ordering data and making it easier to access. This great "innovation" that they claim took so much hard work was really quite obvious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_protocol
Or NeXTStep's interface?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP
Or just Heirarchical Menus mixed with a Card Catalog??
WHy are patents being given out for such crud?
I welcome all the blunders like this that expose the idiocy of current patent system. It can lead to something positive being done with this inefficient 19th century system which certainly can't cope with 21st century problems.
...if Creative does this, they are evil, unoriginal and corrupt with terrible hardware!
But if Apple had done this, everyone here would be singing the praises of the almighty Jobs and his iManna.
Right.
I read the f______ patent. It involves making a folder structure three levels deep (e.g. C:\a\b) and putting music files into subsubdirectories (e.g. C:\a\b\song.mp3). I could do that with Windows 95 and the included version of Media Player. It gets even more obvious with Winamp 2.x, which was available at least when I started college in July 1999, which was well over a year before the filing date of this patent. The following use cases corresponding to the relate to Windows 4.x and Winamp 2.x:
Claim 1: a portable digital media player whose interface is open folder, open folder, open audio file. Nothing in this claim defines "portable media player" to exclude a common laptop computer such as the Acer Travelmate 721TX distributed to all Rose-Hulman Class of 2003 students in 1999. All other claims build on this claim.
Claim 2: open folder, open folder, select all, open file. Winamp takes "a plurality of tracks" opened at the same time and constructs a playlist for them.
Claim 3: open folder, open folder, right click file, Add to Playlist.
Claims 4-6: similar to claim 1-3, involving symbolic links (called "shortcuts" by Windows 4.x and 5.x).
Claim 7: the "Up a folder" button.
Claim 8: storing files an additional folder deep.
Claim 9: root directory contains "by artist", "by album", and "by genre"; folders within "by genre" are named "rock", "classical", etc, and within e.g. the "rock" folder are items (such as symbolic links) that activate songs.
Claim 10: like Claim 9 except the "rock" folder contains symbolic links to rock albums.
Claim 11: root directory contains "by artist", "by album", and "by genre"; allowing navigation to "C:\by Artist\Beatles\White Album\Revolution 1.mp3".
Claim 12: filenames are song titles, and the default action of Winamp is "play this song".
Claim 13: the default action of Windows Explorer is "open this folder".
Claim 14: the root directory is displayed first.
Claim 15: inner directories are displayed after root directories.
Claim 16: root directory contains artist names; allowing navigation to "C:\Beatles\White Album\Revolution 1.mp3".
NO to Intellectual "Property Rights"
Set your phasers on "funky"!
A cease-and-desist order costs marketshare. So Creative can stop Apple's production now...
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
If anything I view this patent as Creatives admission to Apples domination in the mp3 market (slow the big-boy down so we can catch-up).
You have to understand that this patent had to be filed some time in '99 or '00 for it to be awarded now... At that point, there hardly was any kind of an mp3 market to dominate -- that's why things like this patent sounded "inovative" enough for the PTO office to accept them. They can't reject a patent just because everybody has been doing the same thing *since*. If there was no prior art at the time of the submission, it's a valid patent.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
First the fiasco over Carmack's Reverse, and now this. "Creative" is not a fitting name for this once great company that has now become a patent troll.
I've seen about a dozen posts claiming this to be a fact.
Where are the notes that were used in the patent filing? Are they notarized? Did anyone who supports Creative's claim look over Apple's notarized notes?
The process for a patent filing where I work:
1) Document the idea copiously.
2) Get the documentation notarized.
3) Send application (with $6K check) to USPTO
4) The send you a reply notifying you that the application is first for filing purposes.
If you only do steps 3 and 4, you run the risk of losing your patent in court. If someone else can show that they documented the idea first, then it can be argued that they were first with the idea. That may be enough to make a claim for prior art, especially if the product is already on the market.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Maybe they are not going to use the patent to sue Apple, but instead they are going to use the patent to blatantly copy Apple. Since they have the patent, they may think they survival rate in a court case from Apple may be pretty good.
Unfortunately, Creative will still lose in the end, as they do not have the other side of the equation, iTunes.
I honestly think the threat to Apple is minimal. The patent is questionable enough that Creative isn't going to be really abusive with it. They'll ask for their quarter ounce of flesh and be done with it.
The thing that's really bad about the way patents are going is how it ends up affecting the consumer. Let's consider for a moment if Apple wasn't a big corporation, but rather some little shop that found a big hit device. All of these companies, rather than trying to get a piece of the action could very well try to leverage legal action to get them off the market or otherwise take them over.
Using that same scenario some entrepreuneur may not even try to develop the item because of the cost of managing all the legalities of it. They'll try to get whatever patents they can which costs money, and then in the end they'll still be at the mercy of these companies with obscure patents on terribly obvious things. Once again, the consumer loses.
But even when you look at this specific case, what happens? Apple gets charged more money in licensing so they pass it straight on to the consumer. Did Creative's efforts provide any useful knowledge to Apple in their development work? No. Did creative have to spend any effort researching this interface? No. All they did was pay some legal fees and make a cash cow out nothing.
So for every technology there's all these dumb obvious patents which add on to the price. It either costs money to license or costs money to fight it in court, and in the end it means each device just costs more than it should have.
I have no objection to patents of legitimate inventions. Creating new ways of doing things that are truly innovative and different is worth incenting through patents. But these endless foolishly obvious patents is just hurting our economy.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Apple would have had to pay for the patent application, pay to enforce it and would lose many of ther following.
In this case, they did the right thing.
In Real Life (tm), this leads to everyone having nukes "to defend themself".
The Dewey Decimal system is copyright and trademarked by OCLC and they have been known to threaten people with legal action. I kid you not...
I was under the impression that if I invent a Widget that does Foo in 1999 and have the documentation to prove it (ie, drawings, plans, a worklog or journal) and some witnesses for good measure- it doesn't matter if you "invent" it later and patent it, even if the invention was independent; I was first.
Of course, unlike many slashdot posters, I'm happy to admit I know next to nothing about current patent law and steer clear of statements-of-fact...
Please help metamoderate.
So what the patented was basically the idea of the directory tree. Amazing.
but its shit like this that really ends up stifling the market (frivolous lawsuits).
Who says there is a frivolous lawsuit involved? All Apple has to do is sit down with Creative and work out a licensing agreement. The courts aren't involved yet. If Apple has some patents they can throw back at CL then they can get a more favorable cross-licensing deal. This isn't the end of the world for either player (har har).
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I think you meant the process for patent filing in the US is:
...
1) Document the idea copiously.
2) Get the documentation notarized.
3) Send application (with $6K check) to USPTO
4) Ignore any and all prior art.
5)
6) Profit!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The President of Creative explicitly stated in a later press conference that they do not intend to focus on going after Apple. Creative will focus on competing with products. However, Creative certainly will keep the patent option open and they refuse to comment on whether they have involved Apple in private discussions on the matter.
Source
The US is a first to invent and not first to file system. Apple may have old documents showing background work on the system. A court battle would more of a challenge for Creative than getting the patent.
Clearly, the USPO is greedy enough to take the application fees and inept enough to continue to grant ridiculous patents. Combine this with lawyers out to make a fast buck and poorly run companies looking to cash in on other's successes and all I see is a long term, continued degradation of the USA's economy.
Companies will not be able to sneeze without having to pay a licensing fee for the most inane things, thus putting smaller companies in a position where they simply will not be able to compete, regardless of engineering quality and product capabilities.
I suppose it ends when the only jobs left are for lawyers and fast food staff.
Is throught short for through-out? My spell-check chokes on it.
America where you can sue for getting burned from coffee, because it was too HOT
8 9
Not this again...
The coffee was an average on 45 degrees hotter than anywhere else. It was so hot it caused 3rd degree burns. McDonalds had been repeatedly warned about the dangers of their coffee and had done nothing about it.
I hope I always live in a country where I have some recourse against a drive for profits causing blatant disregard for my safety.
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=11070
And the IP is being enforced. The Library Hotel in New York had to pay a license fee to Online Computer Library Center, which in 1988 acquired Dewey Decimal System trademark, for using the Dewey Decimal theme.
This is completely legal, is anyone on here dumb enough to think that big companies will just stop patenting anything in sight? Hell no, I would have done the same thing if I were CEO of Creative.
I patented being outraged at new patents in a web environment. Slashdot owes me a lot of money.
The overhead is probably around 1% of profits. At 100K in profits or less its DIY. At 1M, its one study, at 10M maybe a full opinion and vigorous letter exchanges, 100M and up and its blood in the water for the sharks.
Of course this depends on the market and who else is there. Something brand new or with only a few competitors and its easy to figure out what you're dealing with. In most areas the patent clearance costs would end up being incidental to the costs for doing market research.
How could heating it more save them money, doesn't that require more energy??? Your arguement doesn't make sense.
Oh and when you heat your water in the stove kettle don't you bring it to a boil? Drop the crack-pipe and go back inside your double-wide.
Stop Trailer Trash lawsuits!!!
We can only hope that Creative refuses to license its patent. And in the best case Apple looses and is forced to stop production of its iPod (in current form anyway). This is not out of spite of Apple or its products, but as a necessary step to patent reform.
When I say best case, I mean from a long term perspective. One of the main reasons there is so little effort to reform US patent law is because the ad-hoc and unspoken system of cross licensing that exists among the biggest players hides most of the pain and stupidity of the patent system from the mass consumer. Cross licensing pratices are nearly as harmful as patents themselves, as it basically allows the largest corporations to play by different anticapitalistic rules than the smaller company or inventor. It's only when actual consumers are affected in-masse and it's clear that its because of stupid patents that any real presure on lawmakers will be made. Before it will get better there has to be at least one (maybe many) very large cases where patent law completely disrupts the economy and the public is aware of the cause.
Experience of that Creative already has: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/ 30/0118252&tid=184&tid=220
If everyone's been doing it since, doesn't that argue that it's obvious, and hence non-patentable?
See Andy Hertzfeld's folklore.org for the stories about how MS got the license to the Mac UI and copied the UI.
Remember that was 20 years ago and it was John Sculley's fault.
If a company creates a product, puts it out on the market, and another company takes the idea and releases their own product, how is it possible for the second company to be rewarded the patent for the ideas they borrowed? Isn't there a provision in patent law that prevents this from occurring?
We should seriously consider a rational way to patent the process of obtaining [random negative adjective] patents, and then donate it to the public domain.
This could be the best weapon to stop this madness.
What usually happens in cases like this is that the "offending product" is withdrawn from the USA market.
It is replaced by a more expensive device that has the patented function. Usually this replacement device is not as good as the device that it is replacing in other functions. Sales of the general item category fall somewhat.
Someone else releases a device that does everything that the expensive initial replacement device did only it is much better and cheaper. It has a software hook into the firmware or, more likely currently, has the firmware in a FLASH ROM chip with an undocumented software boot-loader. On a web site that is not USA-based run by fans of the device, a new version of the firmware appears along with loading code in Windows that allows the reFLASHed new better and cheaper unit to do everything that the patent-holder's replacement device can do. Only now the newest device is doing it cheaper and better.
In the final result there are two devices on the market. A cheap, powerful, fully-functional device selling outside the USA and a mediocre expensive crippled version selling in the USA and meeting all the extortionist legal requirements.
Then the cheap, powerful, fully-functional device selling outside the USA is offered on websites for shipment to the USA (the so-called 'gray market'). The Americans end up with the expensive junk and the rest of the world gets high-quality newer and better merchandise. This enables the manufacturer to offer multi-level realistic pricing to the middle-classes of the rest of the world while still cashing in on the American market, with its huge appetite for impulsive junk purchases.
Then the whole process starts again for the next round. An example of the happening recently with a similar product would be region-restricted DVD players.
Did you even read the page that was linked to? Even though it is faster to have done so than to have posted on slashdot, for most here it is better to stay uninformed.
Never seen an iPod screen, but it should be simple enough to have the first screen of the ipod not actually show categories, but simply "Select track".
Surely there's a way to bypass the patent (if it does turn out that it's not overturned).
Sparks:Gadget:Beer Maker
-+--> FUCK
|
---> YOU !
there's no place like ~
If everyone's been doing it since, doesn't that argue that it's obvious, and hence non-patentable?
It's hard to argue that since Creative did actually release a device with such an interface at that time. Yeah, my personal opinion is that it's obvious, but once Creative made one it's hard to say whether others were copying it or just developing the same thing on their own.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
"The coffee was an average on 45 degrees hotter than anywhere else. It was so hot it caused 3rd degree burns. McDonalds had been repeatedly warned about the dangers of their coffee and had done nothing about it."
Boiling water does this. It would be resonable to assume that fresh coffee was made with boiling water, a kind of common knowlege sort of thing. Just because competiters don't keep their coffee hot because it has been sitting around for a long time, and tasting like it, you wouldn't think that common sense and common knowlegde would be overriding issues her. I think that hot water judgement was overturned or at least the award was overturned.
I can see a suit for too sharp steak knife suit to Outback because the competitor's plastic knife offering is duller.
Then let's make the Open Ordering System, and we can use letters instead of numbers... and commas or dashes instead of a decimal point. And then patent the invention of a collection of media items in physical forms assigned unique character-strings based on their subject matter and then sorted lexicographically.
Then we can sue them, and have even more fun!
So what exactly does one have to do to get a patent Denied? - forget to tape the bribe to the back? I'm glad that there is a way to go through your 40,000 mp3's on an lcd screen. But isn't the idea of sorting a non-patentable item. Maybe the algorithm is, but who cares about that?
This is completely false. This is not a sig.
I say to all of you, you are ignorant. Mod this flamebait, I don't care. To say because something is not perfect, that it should be dismantled and done away with is ridiculous. Yes, the patent system right now is not perfect. Yes, there needs to be reform. But are you really that dense and moronic to ignore the last 100 years of innovation that ultimately was started with the encouragement of innovation through the use of patents???
Secondly, for all of you who say "DAMN THE LAWYERS!" Once again, I point to your arrogance and lack of common sense. Do you really think that lawyers cause this??? You honestly believe that Creative, through NO idea of their own decided to try and patent these ideas?? No, that's right, a LAWYER walked in the door and gave them this brilliant idea. The poor, poor companies that are being swindled and deceived by the evil lawyers, what we will do?
Take a look at the companies first before damning attorneys. If the companies didn't want to patent ideas, there would be no need for the attorneys. Attorneys don't create this situations, companies and people do. Stop assuming the lawyers are ALWAYS the evil group. Sometimes they are, but most of the time, in these situations, the attorneys are merely carrying out the wishes of their employers. If an attorney says "No, this is ridiculous" but the client says "Do it", I will give you one guess as to the result and that is to no fault of the attorney.
Finally, I beg you, think before you speak. Many of you screaming about how bad things are, you sound like a whining 5-year-old child. How many of you that actual complain incessantly, know anything beyond what you hear about patents, their history, and what they have actually done for this country. I would bet not many. Yes, things need to change because technology is not the same as when the drafters wrote up the code governing patents, but to say it is useless and is causing problems. My opinion is that it is people like you spewing garbage about how bad things are without knowledge or even a hint of how to correct things as the problem. It's people like you who tell others of how bad things are and influence them to believe something based nothing more than in your lack of facts or knowledge to support your claim.
Try reading Hot Property (although it primarily deals with pirating) for the beginning chapters which describe exactly how important patents were to gaining independence from British dependency in the infancy of this country.
I wish there was a way on /. to filter out idiots. At least then, discussions on patent reform and pending patents would be somewhat worthwhile to open.
...I better go patent that.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
I'm pretty sure my Rio Volt mp3 player had the same basic UI.
Yeah, I would belive that a Rio Volt would be considered prior art and the fact that I have a stack of CDs with a year 2000 time stamp on them gives at least a years headway on Creative. Could it be that since Rio went out of buisness Creative thinks they can sneak this one past everyone?
PS-> Does this say grisly or is slashdot broken?
Er what? Was it was so hot that it melted the container and caused third degree burns? No. Did the employee handling the coffee recaptacle get burned? No. If a container is hot you drop it - pretty much on instinct. If some idiot decides to drop it all over themselves who's fault is that? Seriously, only in America can one sue others because one is stupid ...
If I buy a car that is twice as fast as my current one, floor it and crash into something, can I sue my car manufacturer?
Farewell karma, I knew thee well.
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
Overturned in the fantasy world you live in maybe, but here in the real world...
This isn't accurate. Creative would have to obtain a preliminary injunction, which is nigh impossible based on Apple's current sales and market position. Creative is then in the position where it needs to obtain a declaratory judgement, also quite difficult and the potential for a complete loss would exist. A declaratory judgement would probably take a minimum of a year to obtain even in the fastest court systems. If the case goes to trial it could take years to resolve and any injunction could be stayed pending appeal which would be several years more. By that time, unless Creative has dramatically increased their marketshare, an injunction would be far less lucrative than a license and revenge doesn't reward shareholders.
I guess this means we can't store our music Albums/tracks on our pc's in a logical oranised way.
All kidding aside that was a dumb patent.
From the patent's first independent claim:
1. A method of selecting at least one track from a plurality of tracks stored in a computer-readable medium of a portable media player configured to present sequentially a first, second, and third display screen on the display of the media player, the plurality of tracks accessed according to a hierarchy, the hierarchy having a plurality of categories, subcategories, and items respectively in a first, second, and third level of the hierarchy, the method comprising:
selecting a category in the first display screen of the portable media player;
displaying the subcategories belonging to the selected category in a listing presented in the second display screen;
selecting a subcategory in the second display screen;
displaying the items belonging to the selected subcategory in a listing presented in the third display screen; and
accessing at least one track based on a selection made in one of the display screens.
For a minute, just forget the part about a "portable media player".
Imagine a drive-in fast food joint with a touch screen display. The first "display" on the touch screen display is a list which says:
(a) Beverages
(b) Fast Food
(c) Desserts
categories in first display screen
The guy at the counter presses (b) Fast Food and the second "display" on the touch screen display is a list which says:
(a) Burgers
(b) Pizzas
(c) Hot Dogs
subcategories belonging to the selected category on the second display screen
The guy preses (a) Burgers and the third "display" on the touch screen display is a list which says:
(a) Chicken Burger
(b) Fish Burger
(c) Potato Burger with Cheese
items belonging to the selected subcategory on the third display screen
The guy presses (b) Fish Burger and a small device "outputs" a fish burger neatly wrapped and packed.
accessing the selection made
Just replace fast food joint's touch screen interface with portable media player. How the fuck is this novel and non-obvious?!
Heck, I should just rephrase Creative's patent and get one for Fast Food Joints!!
Apple should drag them to court and blast their balls off... there's plenty of prior art out there (not only iPod - any frikkin' GUI out there!)
Nandz.
If Creative is greedy (and who in the corporate world is not?), they will offer to sell the patent to the highest bidder, and play Apple and Microsoft off against each other.
In the end, Microsoft controls that game, as they have the resources to exceed any offer Apple can make, unless they choose to crank the bidding up so high as to have Apple blow all their cash and short-term investments (something close to $8B), or go into debt to finance the purchase, placing Apple at a serious on-going financial disadvantage. How much Apple spends will depend upon what the iPod market is worth to Apple.
The only player that really wins in this is Creative. Apple loses and Microsoft loses, because the mp3 player market is ruined (except for the Far Eastern manufacturers who could give a rat's ass about patents), and the consumer loses.
And all the people who squawk about the protected AAC format will get to see the DMR-friendly WMA format used to support renting the music on your iPod.
Now, how can you possibly make a selection from hundreds, maybe even thousands of choices on such a tiny screen? Some kind of... heirarchical system of sub-menus, perhaps?
This surely is the very definition of an 'obvious' patent - that therefore shouldn't be patentable in the first place! Something like the iPod's scroll wheel, on the other hand, plainly wasn't obvious, otherwise the various players that were on the market beforehand would have thought of it it rather than use rocker switches, mini d-pads, tiny joysticks and all the other godawful control systems used by companies like... well, Creative. The fact that the scroll wheel works so well might explain why Apple has maybe 80% of the market and Creative's lumpy offerings... don't. Sour grapes disguised as a submarine patent?
The patent system in the US is so obviously fucked up, it's beyond belief. Unfortunately, the people in a position to reform it seem to want to make it even worse so that their bribers, uh, 'campaign contributors' are the ones to benefit [see /. patent stories passim]. Seriously, does Washington actually do anything [i]good[/i] any more, or is it now 100% about the kickbacks and pork and 'think of the children (who can get me voted into office)'?
You must think in Russian.
What does Creative getting awarded a bullshit patent have to do with "admission to Apples domination..."? There's a hell of a lot more companies that make MP3 players than apple, how is it that some people manage to forget that? It's not like Creative ran out and patented the iPod, they patented a data structure that's used by pretty much every player in existance and the patent won't survive the first challenge.
As to copying Apples design, by your claim then Apple copied pretty much every MP3 player that came before THEM becaues they were square boxy things.
Are there really people out there who think Apple invented everything, even the things that existed for YEARS before they joined the market with a "me too" product?
Well, as I understand it, the coffee was hotter than it needed to be. It was kept at that temperature all the time, not just right after brewing. They kept it that hot because they believed it kept the coffee fresher longer. Personally, I don't understand that part, but that's what I've read.
A consultant recommended they lower the temperature. Recent cost saving measures had made the cups very fragile. They were not stable without the lids on. The woman got a cup of coffee at the drive through, held it in her lap as most of us would, took off the lid to pour in some cream and suger and the cup simply fell apart in her lap. McDonalds was negligent in the redesign of the cup and they were negligent in the temperature at which they kept their coffee.
The ruling was not overturned, although McDonalds spun the story very well in the media, leaving people like you to believe they were not at fault and that the case was or should be overturned.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Patents don't cover software by itself.
Everyone needs to stop confusing their fucking operating systems with patents.
Trying here for a little Devil's advocacy:
A hierarchical file-directory's not patentable, nor are digitized music-files... but the combination of the two may have been, according not only to patent laws but also to common sense. Consider the state of the art at the time of inception. If any other approaches were conceived and built (and marketed?), then there's a defensible claim of non-obviousness.
Sure, hitting upon this particular combination was only a matter of time (possibly a very short time)... but don't consumers benefit when "inventors" race toward even the near-obvious?
Meanwhile, the problem with patents has long been their archaic and paralyzing 20-year lifetime. E.g., what percentage of inventors would abandon their pursuits if patent-life were halved? ... or quartered?
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
Even if creative somehow managed to get a judge to overlook there was prior art to even their patent (which there is thus the patent is null and void) they still will get powered out by Apple who has much more money than they could even imagine.
Not bad for a company who 7 years ago was deeply in the red.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
It's been done before on PCs, but how about a CD-ripper built around an actual Walkman-style CD player, car CD player, or stereo-console CD player?
Heck, you could even incorporate DRM or fingerprinting to discourage the casual user from uploading his ripped songs.
I'd love a Walkman that ripped my CDs as I played them, then the next time I inserted the same disk, just played them from flash or hard disk.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Hopefully patents like this will start making the government realise just how flawed the system is.
I'd be a rich man if had a nickel for every time I heard this.
Wake up!!! Bad patents like this will not solve the problem, because the politicians don't care. They like this because it favors business and it's easier to legislate if companies just duke it out in court. One of the following things must happen before real patent reform occurs:
1) The US elects a president and congress interested in the people's well being and take an interest in reasonable intellectual property laws (ha!)
2) A major public incident occurs which hurts a major company in a very visible way and which a particular industry takes to heart and decides to inact patent reform. Note this will require a little luck too, as something like this could make things better or worse.
3) A fee select companies have an attack of conscience and join those who've already started the patent reform campaign in order to get it on lawmakers radar. (ya right!)
4) A bad patent directly affects the US government and a huge battle ensues where by the US wakes up and applies some partial fixes and revamps the patent office which only fix part of the problem but are a step in the right direction.
Stuff like this is so far down the priority list of politicians. I'm sorry but I'm not optimistic about US patent laws. Control over laws for intellectual property was lost the moment someone decided to extend copywrite laws past the original 20 year rule and someone decided the PTO was too busy to actually give patent applications a real quality overview.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
It wasn't just that it was hot. It was hotter than it needed to be, ostensibly because hot coffee stays fresher longer (I thought it was the opposite, but I'm sure the geniuses at McDonalds know better.) But the real issue is the redesign of the cups. They had cut down on the amount of styrofoam and glue used to save money. The cups were unstable, especially without the lid. The woman didn't spill the coffee on herself, she went to a drive-through, got a cup and held it in her lap, parked, took off the lid to pour in some suger and cream and the cup fell apart in her lap.
McDonalds spun this story so well that even smart people like yourself believe the lies they have spread about the case and feel the decision was unfair to McDonalds.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I declare the season open for creative LART creation.
... Standards and Practices !
PenGun
Do What Now ???
A hierarchical file-directory's not patentable, nor are digitized music-files... but the combination of the two may have been
Winamp 2.x is designed to operate only with Windows 95, Windows NT 4, and their successors, whose file system is hierarchical and whose file system view is hierarchical. In addition, all Windows systems have outer folder Windows (or WinNT in some versions), inner folder Media, and a plurality of .wav and .mid files under that. It has been possible since Windows 95 to open C:\Windows\Media\The Microsoft Sound.wav, which already covers several claims of this patent.
Do you have linkage to support the recaptacle redesign weakness theory? I ask, because its the first that I've heard of it (and google is no help so far) - I've only ever heard of the story through third party websites (most of which are usually reputable).
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
This is messed up! There should be more restrictions on what people are allowed to patent. Though... I guess that would cause different problems.
Remember Creative is the company that sued their competition into oblivion and then purchased their assest from the bankruptcy court. OBTW, they LOST the suit but still managed to bankrupt Aureal. Granted, Apple has a hell of a lot more money, but good luck going after one of the darlings of Singapore.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Software patents have no requirement for a hardware component in the US.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Imagine how high the bar for entry into any technology market if you have to pay a small army of patent attorneys, clerks, paper shufflers, pencil pushers, etc., to make sure your butt is covered.
You do and it is.
from the abstract of the patent:
"A method, performed by software executing on the processor of a portable music playback device, that automatically files tracks according to hierarchical structure of categories to organize tracks in a logical order. A user interface is utilized to change the hierarchy, view track names, and select tracks for playback or other operations."
from what i've gathered of the ipod, it files data into a random structure of directories (via hashing) and categorizes/accesses them via indexing.
(open the ipod in a mac with tinker tool used to show hidden/system files and take a look in the "ipod control" directory)
That is only remotely similar, and pretty far off from what was claimed on the patent.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Just wanted to add that the woman originally only sued to get back medical costs. However the McDonalds lawyers in their wisdom argued that they should not be required to pay the reconstruction costs for the 3rd degree burns, because the woman was in her 70ies (IIRC) already, and reconstruction would be practically wasted.
Which enraged the jury so much that it ordered a multi-million fine, which was later significantly reduced by the judge.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Because if it has - Apple can counter-sue Creative for stealing the idea (and what a perversion they have made of it - look at the ugliest mp3 player in a world called 'Zen'!!!). Besides I remember someone from Creative saying that they basically stole the idea from Apple.
"Apple didn't blunder, but in all likelihood took the correct position that a displayed representation of a heirarchical filesystem was unpatentable."
That doesn't sound like typical Apple behavior -- they can and will use the legal system to their advantage.
Apple owns hundreds of patents for ideas and processes which would seem intuitive to the average Slashdotter. To wit:
Perhaps I am over-simplifying some of these, but this is par for the course whenever Slashdotters discuss particular patents.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
She wasn't driving. She was in the back seat, and yes, the car was stopped.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Although it might eventually lead to patent reform, the other side effect of removing Apple from the portable music player market is that Microsoft gains a format monopoly. Apple is the only thing standing in the way of ubiquitous Windows Media DRM!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I'm desribing this here to short-circuit anyone else from getting any patents, not that there is anything original here other than physical size and portability and implimenting that is patently obvious to anyone but the USPTO.
----------------
Play-and-rip CD player
Purpose:
Allow user to accumulate a library of digitized music as he plays music CDs.
Design:
Standard CD player with audio output, codec ("ripper", either in hardware or software), storage, and user interface.
Typical usage:
User inserts CD and presses "play."
Song is encoded to computer-readable form and stored on disk or other storage medium ("ripped") and played simultaniously. When song is finished ripping, it continues playing until complete. Meanwhile, other songs on the CD are ripped.
Songs previously ripped are played from storage medium rather than CD, saving wear and tear on the CD. When user inserts the same CD in the future, the songs are played from the storage medium.
Additional features:
When a track is ripped, an accompanying log file is created containing information from the CD including number of tracks, size of track, and/or any other available CD-specific information, information about the track including song length, track number, a hash of the track, and/or any other available track-specific information.
When a track is ripped, at the manufaturer's option, the track is watermarked with the device's serial number, a timestamp. Various forms of digital-rights-management, aka digital-norights-management, can be incorporated as well. This is to deter but not totally prevent illegal copying.
When a track is ripped, at the manufacturer's and/or user's option, the track has the data from the log file embedded into it using steganography or other means. This is to allow the data to be bound to the track for customer convenience.
At the manufacturer's option, the storage media can be removable and/or external to the CD, e.g. USB-connected media.
At the manufacturer's option, the device can connect to a computer, phone, or other devices to transfer the content of the media. The device can also receive information incuding tracks, information about tracks, and digital-rights-management information from the computer or other device. This connection can be wired or wireless.
At the manufacturer's option, the device can have a separate medium which stores only the meta-data about each CD and track. One use for this is to keep a history of every song played on a device. There are of course other uses.
The user interface possibilities are endless, but all should include the ability to delete, organize, and possibly input information about tracks and CDs recorded on both media as well as disks not yet recorded, such as the information about the next disk the user will insert. Optionally, the user interface should have a means to mark certain tracks with personal attributes, such as marking a song as "good" or "bad." This can also be done automatically, such as if a user presses "skip" twice in succession then mark the track "bad" and if he hits "play" twice in a row mark it "good." The user interface need not include any LCD or other visual output, although this is preferable.
If the device includes audio, video, or other recording capabilities, the user interface should accomodate those.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Walkman is a trademark or registered trademark of Sony Corporation. I should've put this in the parent post.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Don't even try. I have yet to find anyone on Slashdot capable of understanding the case and changing their opinion on it.
Creative's patent (in any sane world) would be thrown out because there is a plethora of prior art, but mostly because it is blinking obvious to anyone with at least a room temperature IQ. My guess is that Apple will offer them a token pittance (cheaper than going to court) & tell them to pound sand. Creative should take it if they have any sense.
"When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." - Mark Twain
Hmph. I can't find anything to back it up, in fact I found a different, more recent story about a woman and some hot tea whose cup disintegrated so maybe I am conflating the two stories in my mind. The accounts I have read seem to say she sloshed it on herself when pulling off the lid, and this was found to make her 20% responsible for her injury, reducing her award by that amount. Anyways, the point that the coffee was above industry standard temperature holds. The coffee was so hot (85C!) that it was undrinkable without suffering serious injury.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
to bad SoundJam came out in 1999 a full year before this. and as we all know SoundJam beget iTunes which beget the iPod.
My god the USPTO is crazy! Somebody has managed to patent, if you distill it down, an indexing system with a sorting alogorithm built in. So are they gonna sue libraries/Hospitals/Nature/Me (my vinyl collection is catologued with que cards and cross referenced) my brain does the sorting*. Is the the USPTO stupid or something! Next they'll patent the process of inventing.
Here is a simple test to see if a patent is stupid. Is the invention something you can do in your head. For example If I asked a beatle fan to name all the albums by the beatles could they do it? Or to name the albums in which a Dylan song is in I'm sure the brain would be capable of doing this. As opposed to is you able to light a room up? No, then invent a light bulb oh theres a patentable invention!
The only thing patentable in this patent is not the way the data is organised just the details in the file system (i,e all that enum stuff)
But I have no simphathy for apple they would do the same. The big firms know the patent system is wrong but they'll never sort the mess.
* - Many moons ago you could by software that catalogued stuff for you I remember i had one for my Amiga i'm sure it used a similiar system of organising stuff.
Maybe joining a large campaign (I am part of the ffs in europe fighting the software patent bill trying to be pushed through the European Union).
Vent, but vent in the right direction otherwise you will achieve nothing (image local MP waking to the sound of his letterbox rattling endlessly as 1000 mails come through!)
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
We could help Apple by hosting a DDOS against Creative!
Slashdotters away: Creative
Don't know how that would help, but it gives us something to do till the next article.
Just this once I'll take a low UID as irrevocable proof :)
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
"So because Apple failed to patent its own interface, then that means the first one to the Patent Office doors gets to patent it?"
Apple was not the 1st company to develop an mp3 player. Creative beat them to the market with a player as well as a patent.
from the article
""The first portable media player based upon the user interface covered in our Zen Patent was our Nomad Jukebox MP3 player," said Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo.
"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." "
Vote for Pedro
A little dupe inside the article which will probably get duped (refer back to this comment when it does):
"...The patent covers the way files are organised and navigated...The patent covers how files on a music player are organised..."
Awwwwww, baby dupes are soooo cute!
Apples cash stock pile as of last quarter was 5 billion. with zero Debt. i doubt this GUI is worth 600 million. better to prove prior art to creatives if allowed
Apple shouldn't have blundered with this patent oversight, but its shit like this that really ends up stifling the market (frivolous lawsuits)
Wait a minute cowboy. Getting off topic here but if you want to talk about stifling the market, look at Apple themselves. Think of using a non Apple music player with the iTMS system? How about using an iPod with a service other then iTunes? I recall a third party specifically trying to make inroads with this and Apple actively speaking out against it and releasing a patch to prevent it. You are NOT Apple, your strange mental connection and some how feeling like a part of something is not real. Just like the woman around the office that talk about who did what, said what and wore what at a dog and pony televised award show from the previous night. There is no link between the communication and thoughts of these office woman and the people they idolize and discuss on a day to day basis. They are worlds apart and will never come together. They somehow feel they know and are being a part of the stars lives and glamor but the are not even a spec of dust in the wind that blows by them. It is worse then viewing them from a permenant one way mirror. You are nothing but a consumer and you get screwed because of it. If you are happy with the what is currently available within Apple then you would not be affected by third party additions, although others could benefit. You can not deny that. Quit thinking of poor Apple, they have absolutely no interest in you regardless of how much you want to believe or try to rationalize otherwise. Here is a good quote for you.. "You are not what you drive".
Apple is not alone at all in the game of making it hard on competitors but you paint the picture of Apple being the nice guy on the block wanting to just get along with everyone but that is not the case at all.
Wow, considering that they've been doing that stuff for 20 years, if they were going to patent it at all they should have done it then when it was new.
Not only do they have a patent on this but they have better sound, longer battery life, and cost less for the same capacity player. I'm still baffled by the fact that creative can't come up with a marketing campaign considering they really do have the better product.
There would still be prior art, because music files are just that, files.
Those are design patents, not invention. It patents the general look, not the function.
If Creative refuses resonable terms, which is probable, Apple with write a check to their laywers to defend the pattent (or atleast delay having to do anything about it for many months).
Apple then go through their own collection of patents (some of which creative will infringe), turn up to a meeting with their team of lawyers, throw down the large thick folder of apple patents that creative infringe and say "let's chat".
Note, I personally do not think this is even worthy of a patent. Though if anyone is to get this patent, it should certainly be Apple who not only came up with the "idea", but also turned it into a viable consumer product. I don't think any "ideas" should be allowed to be patented. IMO, a company should not only have to come up with an idea/innovation, but should also have to implement it into a product ready for consumer "consumption". Anything short of that is just a thought IMO and certainly should not be allowed monopoly protection. I have tons of thoughts and some of them actually make sense, should I be allowed to pay some money and stop others from having the same freaking thought and implementing that thought? Damn, patents are broken!
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Congressmen and women are mostly...
LAWYERS!
By letting this screwed up patent system exist, they create lots and lots of...
LAWSUITS
So, guess who makes money by creating lawsuits?
LAWYERS!
Gee, I wonder why Congress doesnt want to do anything about the patent system...
No UI software patents apply to the Shuffle, so all related revenues are safe! Steve Jobs is a genious!!!
It is pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Apple didn't blunder, but in all likelihood took the correct position that a displayed representation of a heirarchical filesystem was unpatentable. After all, tree-style directory display utilities have been around since MS-DOS 2.0 (and probably much earlier).
A key part of the patent is that a single entity lives at multiple "leaves" of the tree, and that it is automatically placed at the proper "leaves" based on meta data.
Not exactly the same as a DOS FAT tree representation. I'd agree that there is prior art, but it's not that obvious.
Actually I think dangerous drivers should be forced by law to drive around with an open cup of hot coffee near their genitals.
It would really cut down on some of the aggressive driving I see every morning.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Actually... the arrangement may not be patentable... but how it is displayed is. I believe IBM has a patent (which was brought up in the counter suit in against SCOG) that covered "The method of displaying a directry structure using a graphical tree" or something like that. There was a big stink because all of the current OS's do that. There may be issues with the patent (prior art, obvious) but as it stands... it might be almost valid if and total bs at the same time.
Stop signs are only Suggestions
Apple stands to benefit as much or more than Creative, as smaller players who can't afford Creative's licensing fees are squeezed out.
Just a guess, but those in government, and the people that voted for them, probably have more shares in Creative or Apple than in any of the smaller companies that might stand to lose.
Now if Creative were to take a leaf out of SCO's book, and start sueing ipod owners for using an infringing product, THEN people might pay attention.
Dragging and dropping was indeed invented by Apple. It wasn't present in the Xerox Alto/Star or any previous mouse-driven system; it appeared for the first time in the Apple Lisa.
The drag-and-drop gesture (yes, it was the first mouse gesture) allowed Apple to eliminate the "move" button on the mouse. The double-click behavior allowed it to eliminate the "activate" button, meaning Apple could use a single-button mouse to achieve all the functions of a three-button mouse (at the time.)
I doubt anyone would have called it obvious or intuitive in 1983. If it were, we might all be using single-button mice.
For that matter, I believe that sliders, and radio buttons as features of a GUI were introduced by Apple at one time or another. (Xerox had buttons, scroll bars and popup menus, and maybe some other thing's I've forgotten.) Whether any of these GUI controls were ever worthy of patent protection is debatable, of course.
Creative Labs already had MP3 players out in the market way back in early 2002. A search for patents "assigned to" creative labs results in the following. Those who have read the links on the article can see that creative (including the Nomad) has been selling MP3 players since 2000.
I don't see the absence of creativity here for being the first to move from CD-ROM MP3 players to Solid State and Hard drive based MP3 players and therefore the very early browsing interfaces. Some of my friends who have used the player have commented that the UI itself was clumsy and difficult to get through. The iPod, has achieved better looking design (Apple always does that!) and a neat easily usable User Interface.
The article by BBC is at best vague, what "Patent #" has been awarded, and where is it applicable? are questions that are not answered by an article addressing these issues.
While the basic issue of patents on User Interfaces and File systems may be questioned (and even considered invalid), Creative has been a pioneer in Audio, later in MP3 handheld players who lost out to competitors later after their innovation spark fizzled out. Just because everyone sees iPods playing Music today (which have a better business model) is no reason to ignore Apple's patents nor criticise Creative Labs for filing for patents (and being awarded them) while they introduced their products first.
No Greater Friend, No Greater Enemy! (Lucius Cornelius Sulla)
Moreover, my understanding is that the patent was submitted before iPod's were even made. Unless I read the article wrong.
sigfault. core dumped.
Now that's a rich dude!
"...every part of me will be patented by various corporations and scientists."
There's a scientist called Dick. Guess which one of your parts he has a patent on?
Today the Alphabet and Numbers have been patented, now everyone must pay royalties for each alphanumeric used. News at 10pm. This post has cost $.05 per character.
Now, every 14 year old kid who learned there's a world outside of their parents basement about 18 months ago thinks Apple invented the whole F'n concept of digital music, portable players, and online music sales. Completely oblivious of the fact that Apple "stole" every one of those ideas from existing products, and leapfrogged the competition with better marketing, not innovation.
And for the record, there's not a damn thing wrong with that, except for the idiocy/hypocrasy that the slavering apple fanatics toss at everyone else in the market, but grant apple total immunity from.
p.s. I have an iPod mini, my 5th portable mp3 player and I hate it. it works fine, but it's wrapped up with so much DRM and big-brotherism that I'd trade it in a minute for a Creative Labs or iRiver unit.
So the first person that "patents" an idea like 2+2=4 is the one who should make money and sue the frak off anyone who knows what 2+2 equals?
Fucking pleaaaase. The reason most "obvious" patents are already not patented is that they're freaking idiotically obvious.
Please take, for example, anything involving traditional math and computer algorithms. Think for a change, please???
The CB App. What's your 20?
I don't think this would ever work. In a library, music is organized mainly in the 780's-790s, then by artist. After that, it's alpha by CD title. I don't think that would be too much fun for the average joes, but I think us /. folk would relish it to bits, I think.
Support the Chagossians
How long before this whole 'navigate a tree menu from a small device' becomes a minefield of twat-patents.
Dig out your old calculators you know the fancy graphing ones, and look at how the functions and menus are ordered there.
Kabam, bye bye patent. They should recruit me just for saying kabam in meetings.
To confirm you're not a script,
please type the word in this image: recruit
random letters - if you are visually impaired, please email us at pater@slashdot.org
**I think someone should fix this as it is evident that they are not very random, otherwise it is some fluke that they spell words now! (yes I know cowboyneal put his dictionary l33t script in, hasn't he got anything better to do?)
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Voice recognition.
Just say the name of the artist and/or song you want to listen to, or even do a lyric search on a few words by speaking them into a little mic. That'd be waaay easier than arrowing through any kind of categories.
Course, then you've gotta have some processor in addition to just space on the puppy.
OK. The patent office can't handle the load. I don't really think that any, one institution could. I mean where could you find a group of people who could find prior art within 20 secs... oh right /. does.
/. should have the final say. Hell, that would be REALLY stupid, but it would enable the patent office to tap into the nerd community for free, and we get to feel powerful. If they like that, maybe they could then let groklaw do the same with new laws.
Why isn't there a community forum where new patents are bought forward and people can moderate them, and the patent office can then analise that 'moderation' and act upon that. You know, a democratic process.
I'm not saying that
This post is slightly tounge in cheek, but there must be someway to tap into the wisdom of crowds, even if the final descision is made by those in charge.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Mod up I think.
Surely just showing a bit of prior art will sink em. Old databank watches and dialer pads did this with phone numbers and grouped contacts, as well as having minimal buttons to frustrate. Lets hope apple adds 'voice recognition' and motion sensing jestures in the earpiece, so you can shake your head to skip back and forth - but quads in wheelchairs have been doing this for yonks. People confined to wheelchairs have had multilevel heirarchical filesystems/menus even longer. Many have already linked mobile phones/ipods/chair control/GPS/Drive control with home automation - with - blowpipes,laser pointers strapped on the chin/head driving a universal remote control(with a display).
Good lord! According to the third one down, I need to ask for Apple's permission to do my summer internship.
Weak.
So weak.
Does the patent cover the shipping of mp3 players with viruses too?
Very lame to patent something such trivial.
Sucks that the patent organisation let something like this through.
Patents and software patents are killing innovation and competition and encouraging monopoly and ugly bussiness tactics.
Did they go after GEOS?
I know they went after Microsoft, and worked out some kind of deal. What's stupid is that Apple licensed it's UI from Xerox, after copying it. How tacky is that. "The engineer is hoist by his own petard."
I suspect Apple was aware of the patent, at least at some point, because they probably studied the Nomad.
Assuming they knew it was patented, they did the smart thing and developed it anyway. At worst, they would be kicked out of the market, or, by the time they had a position, they could probably create a better menuing system.
The patent itself is too general. Menu systems where you drill down from screen to screen, and back up to the previous menu, have existed ever since "glass TTYs". Most Apple 2 and other home computer apps used them exclusively. Apple's original Appleworks program used them.
The coffee was colder the the recomended temerature from a us coffe loving organisation:
From http://www.stellaawards.com/stella.html:
Here's the Kicker: Coffee is supposed to be served in the range of 185 degrees! The National Coffee Association recommends coffee be brewed at "between 195-205 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal extraction" and drunk "immediately". If not drunk immediately, it should be "maintained at 180-185 degrees Fahrenheit". (Source: NCAUSA.) Exactly what, then, did McDonald's do wrong? Did it exhibit "willful, wanton, reckless or malicious conduct" -- the standard in New Mexico for awarding punitive damages?
looks like you missed the point of parent post.
;)
Parent tells that Apple not patented that thingy coase they not invented it and it was invented long before patenting question stands.
Your examples are nice, but seems that Apple can at least arguably pretend at inventing all of them (may be exept overclocking
Let's do it...
Then, open the worldwide one and exclusive patent bureau on Mururoa atoll. Sue any organisation/government trying to abuse your rights to this patent business. And wait for the global warming last tide to sink the whole thing.
So, this could be extended to covering DOSSHELL, FIle Manager, the Macintosh Finder, really anythign that shows things in a hierarchical menu.
antipaucity
A simple solution for Apple then: Stop calling the iPOD a mp3 or media player. Add a calender and clock to the interface and call it a portable computer. Heck call it a next gen Newton.
Wrong. Ever heard of provisionals? Let's you file the idea and wait one year before filing the full application. Or there's continuations. Filing date and priority date are different things.
Right. When you rip your own CDs to MP3 and put them on the iPod they're all covered in DRM.
Oh, wait, they're not at all. My mistake.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
If Apple is infringing, then so is Microsoft and everybody else. If I understand correctly, Creative received a patent for storing digital music in a heirarchal directory structure. And that differs from the mp3s stored on my local harddrive, how?
Under the recent P2P court cases, it was found that companies that provide for P2P are liable for copyright violations, even if that isn't the purpose of the P2P service.
Wouldn't that line of thinking now mean that Creative, which has patented (owns) the method of storing legal and illegal mp3s is liable for allowing people to store illegal mp3s? Again, the P2P cases said the companies intended use didn't matter it was the ability to do illegal activities that did.
I expect a flood of new AND innovative products from all sorts of different companies any day now. Maybe, even Rio can make a comeback.
What?
I'm going to anticipate your response touting aftermarket hacks that allow you to get around Apples ridiculously intrusive proprietism in the iPod, but that doesn't change the fact that they deliberately crippled the unit to try to drive purchases to their music store, and to cover DRM as well.
The PJB-100 from HanGo had a 3-level hierarchy in its menu - Set, Disc, Track.
J ukebox
http://www.mynotebookstore.com/articles/Personal_
This alone knocks out the broad claims.
As I understand it, in part, McDonalds was found at fault because their resident coffee experts (product managers for coffee, or whatever they're called there) were unable to tell the jury what temperature they keep their coffee at.
This means that they were failing to control the temperature of the coffee, and were unable to affirm that they made any efforts to keep the coffee in a temperature range that is reasonably safe. It was indifference leading to injury.
Coffee from most places would have resulted in significantly less injury, coupled with a lack of control of the temperature made her injury unnecessary and preventable.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
hardlinks on 'nix.
I'm going to anticipate your response touting aftermarket hacks that allow you to get around Apples ridiculously intrusive proprietism in the iPod, but that doesn't change the fact that they deliberately crippled the unit to try to drive purchases to their music store, and to cover DRM as well.
Of course they did. How else would they be able to get the record companies to agree to sell music digitally over the internet? I'm willing to accept such limitations. But it isn't like I didn't know about them when I purchased my ipod.
But that's outside of this discussion anyway, we were talking about iPod, not iTunes. Unless you consider them to be one product, which honestly IS pretty much how Apple is marketing them. Considering that they ARE #1 in the market, it may be a little hard to find fault with it, but it doesn't change the fact that it's a case of forcing people to fit the market, not vis versa.
"Because life is random. Really, really random. Like, 60 Gigs of random."
You know what?
Creative made some dumb decisions in the past. They should have better marketed their mp3 player before Apple came out with one. Apple simply advertised the usefulness of an mp3 player, and look where it got them. The general public wasn't aware of Creative's first device.
Additionally, I think Creative is dumb for not implemeting a voice recogision system yet, for telling the player which song to play next. If I were CEO of Creative, profits would be looking a little different.
Since MS-DOS 2.0? Uh, try since Xanadu. The Apple iPod view is a miller column browser (just like the "column" view in OS X's finder, only it shows just 1 column at a time). Apple got the MCB from NeXT, NeXT got it from Xerox (Smalltalk), and Xerox got it from Xanadu. That's 1960's/1970's.
... and hopefully embarrassing to both the USPTO and Creative.
The "prior art" here ought to be overwhelming
(I've also heard that their claim is not on the interface display of information, but upon the organization of the information:
artist > album > song
but THAT one hopefully will be seen as painfully obvious and not at all "original work" on Creative's part. But I think that might be more subjective, and thus require some work in convincing a judge/jury.
You are absolutely right. The iPod does not store files by artist/album/song like iTunes does. It instead creates a hashed folder everytime you add songs to the iPod. Each sync session creates new folders with audio files in it. The iPod's software dynamically scans these folders for new tracks, and updates menu information via any tags that are embedded in the files. If Creative patented how the files are stored on the device, then the iPod does not violate this patent at all. Regardless, the vagueness of the patent, such as the definition of a digital music device (a laptop with iTunes could be a digital music device) leaves plenty of prior art around to challenge the patent if Creative gets lawsuit crazy.
How does this pass the nonobvious test? You have to wonder if the Patent Office even reads the claims any more or just goes by the title. If I sort my books alphabetically and then by some arbitrary grouping, thats not worthy of a patent. Change books to mp3s and sort to display and you have Creative's patent.
SIGFAULT
Here's a quote from a Forbes Magazine article on the subject
r tner=yahootix)
(http://www.forbes.com/technology/2005/08/31/
creative-patent-switch-cx_dl_0831creative.html?pa
They don't sound very impressed with Creative's claim.
"The "breaking news" e-mail alert issued to reporters Tuesday morning by Creative Labs was bound to attract attention.
It trumpeted news that the company had received a patent for an important interface used in portable media players. The alert named Apple Computer four times, noting that Creative Labs had applied for its patent well before Apple's iPod hit the market. The implication, as subtle as a freight train, was that Creative planned to assert its patent against Apple.
The news alert included instructions for an afternoon conference call, presumably to discuss the matter with Creative executives. This was big news and scads of reporters, including many from the national media, were lured into calling. But rather than discuss what was promised, Creative used the opportunity to shill for a new line of handheld digital entertainment products, which were barely mentioned in the patent news alert."
and
"Since Creative itself stoked the flames by naming Apple and the iPod in the headline of its news release, the company was repeatedly asked whether it planned to sue Apple to recover royalties. But McHugh stayed on message, preferring instead to leverage its captive audience by discussing its upcoming products. "
I don't think Apple's going to be throwing any royalties in Creative's direction any time soon.
by not buying Creative's product ever since the iPod came out. Yes, I know Creative's MP3 player sales have increased every year, but they have not maintained marketshare as the market has grown(mostly due to popularity of iPod).
Thanks for the information. I think the "needed" to be is a subjective decision and my point of coffee being made from boiling water is still a reasonable common sense assumption. If the coffee were cool enough to not burn then I would say the coffee temperature was too cool and possibly dangerously cool for food products. (140 degrees I think is the standard for a minimum, that would burn you at that temperature but not as badly).
I agree completly that the weak cup construction is a valid issue. The argument for that would be the savings on the environment of minimizing the waste product but there is a point where it is too weak. It should not be that the lid is necessary to not have it collapse in your grip. They should have been nailed on that but I don't think the coffee temperature should have been an issue.
Patents are really neat things. AFAIK you can release closely related patents provided that there is a discernible difference between products (feel free to correct me). It seems to me that many companies involved in the world of computer business tread this thin line between violation and derivation very closely. Thus it seems to me whilst Creative may argue Apple violates their patent, Apple may be able to point out discernible differences (and prove them) to stay in the clear.
Also of consideration is that many companies in this field hold an armada of patents with competition silently respecting these patents. Perhaps if Creative aggressively pursued Apple with this patent Apple in turn may "fire a salvo" of patent violation charges against Creative. It is my belief that this patent is more a bragging right for Creative than a weapon against Apple (i.e. they're giving the kings of the UI the middle finger for having received this UI patent).
I honestly think the threat to Apple is minimal. The patent is questionable enough that Creative isn't going to be really abusive with it. They'll ask for their quarter ounce of flesh and be done with it.
I'm not so sure about that. Looks like they've filed another one (for the same exact thing?): patent application 20050187976. Or is this just a defensive move in case the original hierarchical filing system (aka directory tree) fell through?
I was contemplating the immortal words of Socrates, who said, "I drank what?"
rofl that was great, thanks for that. If I could mod I'd mod you right up.
I see no clause in the Consolidated Patent Laws document or in the Consolidated Patent Rules document which would suggests something that seems intuitively obvious; A file for Patent which attempts to lay claim to a process which is so trivial as to be the natural and likely inclination of most people, or is so simple as to be unavoidable, are ineligible. It appears to me that the difference between "rules" and "laws" is that rules are determined by the USPTO, whereas laws are legislated by congress. Is this correct? Perhaps there is some other document that I am not seeing which specify such an obvious guideline?
.... perhaps; Patents which "induce spontaneous laughter by members of the USPTO office and/or members of the general public because of the stupidity and/or ludicrousness of the request" should be legally ineligible.
... I was able to find the following guideline which, to me, clearly suggests that the patent (#6,928,433 btw) should be ineligible:
** 1.43 In case an inventor is insane or otherwise legally incapacitated, the legal representative (guardian, conservator, etc.) of such inventor may make the necessary oath or declaration, and apply for and obtain the patent. [48 FR 2709, Jan. 20, 1983, effective Feb. 27, 1983]
... It seems clear to me that each person attempting to file this patent would trigger this clause, recursively, indefinitely. I can only think of one other reason a person would file this patent; intent to stifle a competitor by subversively manipulating our public legal system with merit-less accusations for purposes of instigating a punishment or restriction which has no legal or ethical basis.
If we cannot do anything legally, then we can vote with our dollars. Creative Technology's patent is un-ethical and, if so many Americans weren't in such a state of philosophical confusion, un-American. This patent may be the straw that broke the camel's back; I'm strongly considering the creation of a grass-roots web resource to round-up those of us left who still have some shred of common-sense so that we can use our collective power to identify and "fiscally balance" those that chose to profiteer from unethical business practices. Anybody interested?
Creative included the news about the granted patent http://creative.com/press/releases/welcome.asp?pid =12175, but it doesn't have the guts to include the news about the virus they shipped with the Creative Neon MP3 player on their website.