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. "

Comments

Gross.

[Kellan]

The Nomad's design is an atrocity. It's so damn hard to navigate when you have 40 GB of MP3s on there....

Re:Patent System Broken

[hobobeaver]

Creative said it had applied for the patent, dubbed the Zen Patent, on 5 January 2001 and was awarded it on 9 August..."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."

If you had RTFA you would know that creative applied for the patent *before* the ipod was even released, so no, creative did not rip off apples interface

Link to Patent

[andrewm]

Here's the patent 6,928,433

Re:Patent System Broken

[Red Flayer]

"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. "

Absolutely. However, other forms of correspondence are also very, very important. A politician's office ranks correspondence according to the vehicle in which it is delivered. The rarer, and more time-intensive, the correspondence, the more it is valued.

The best way to get your Congressperson to take notice of you, other than face-to-face contact, is a handwritten letter. I know this may be tough for us /.ers, but one handwritten letter means more than five typed letters.

A telephone call to their office is also ranked highly.

Postcards are counted, but are weighted less than letters. Ditto for faxes. Emails are also counted, but are worth almost nothing.

If you really want patent law to change, have a letter-writing interlude at your next LAN party, or other get-together. Buy the stamps and envelopes ahead of time, sit down with paper and pen, and write it out. It sometimes helps if the best writer in the group writes a sample letter.

It works for the pro-censorship folks, for environmental groups, and for other interest groups -- it will help with patent laws if enough people do it.

Here's a useful database of phone, fax, email, and physical addresses of Congresspeople: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/