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Apple Is Accused of Violating Software Patent
outz writes "And it begins... Creative Technology, a maker of portable music players, has accused Apple Computer of violating a newly granted software patent covering the way users navigate music selections." From the NYT article: "Creative Technology, which is based in Singapore and has United States operations in Milpitas, Calif., said it would consider every option available to defend the patent, including possible legal action. Apple declined to comment on the patent. The patent, which the company calls the Zen Patent, covers Creative's interface for portable players, which allows users to select a song, album or track by navigating a succession of menus. The patent office awarded the patent on Aug. 9." We reported on the granting of the patent a few days ago.
I know, Creative had it first. You can pull all of the patent information from the last time we discussed this issue but the fact still remains that a patent application date does not establish when an idea was first formulated. The Patent Office can only issue based on what is available, so it will be up to Apple to prove, if it can, that its interface was documented and notarized before Creative. That will mitigate Creative's claim of uniqueness and would change their patent status.
But that whole discussion pales in comparison to the larger issue of patents granted for things that the entire industry knows has shitloads of prior art attached to it. These defensive patents are what will kill innovation in this country, not piracy as Microsoft and the RIAA will claim.
Write your representative and tell them you DEMAND patent reform.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Yet another demonstration of how the patent system is irretrievably broken.
Seriously, it shouldn't even be possible to patent a hierarchical menu system...prior art abounds. This reminds me of the amusing, although almost certainly apocryphal, story of the man who attempted to patent the wheelbarrow. Like the man in the story, Creative ought to be thrown out of court, preferably onto some tender portion of their collective corporate anatomy.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I do. But now they seem to be used to fight legal wars and stop technological and engineering advances, instead of promoting them.
... then Creative would owe me money ...
Sigh.
Maybe I should file a patent for delivering virus programs with a USB or other plug-in computer device
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Let's get retarded.
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
I have a patent pending regarding complaining about idiotic patents online. When this baby passes, you're all going to be screwed! Muahahaha.
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This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
"which allows users to select a song, album or track by navigating a succession of menus."
How the hell did they actually patent that? It makes me sick... What other ways are you going to navigate your music library if not by artist, album, or genre?! There's not too many ways to impliment this.
Considering Apple holds the lion's share of the MP3 player market, though a late comer, it's not surprising to see the legal threat, but perhaps Creative Technologies should be looking at their own failure to capitalise on the market which left the door open for Apple.
Patent 6,928,433
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"Make them know that if they want to persue a claim, they're going to have to front a heluva lot of money for it.
So then the small organizations or individuals that have their ideas ripped off have no recompense?
The patent system is broken, but breaking it worse won't help.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
When I try to think of prior examples of people implementing the Creative patent as I understand it, the absolute first thing that comes to mind is... that little file browser thingy from NeXT. Which was later assimilated into OS X when NeXT was bought by... Apple. Can you tell the difference between this and the cascading menus in the iPod? Because I can't.
And of course I'm still trying to figure out whether NeXT themselves ripped off the browser from that class browser widget you see so often in Smalltalk, or if it went the other way around.
Oh, but of course, the NeXT example covers a browser for files and the Smalltalk example covers a browser for objects, and in the mad calculus of patent law this is totally different from a browser for music files...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Then Creative should give up, now, while there's still something left. I know for a fact that Steve keeps his litigators locked in a barren back room and only feeds them every third day. Makes 'em mean. . .
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
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http://slashdot.org/apple/02/05/01/2012217.shtml?
Apple sues to stop leaks
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/08/03/01202
Apple sues Think Secret
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/06/0
Apple sues Future Power
http://www.macobserver.com/news/99/july/990701/ap
Apple sues domain name owner
http://www.slashstar.com/blogs/tim/archive/2004/1
Apple sues eMachine
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-230054.html?legacy=
It seems like it was yesterday, or maybe 20 years ago, but I seem to recall that Apple tried to sue microsoft for stealing several aspects of its GUI, like the trash can, folders, and the assignment of operations to specific menus like File and Edit.
Apple lost that lawsuit when the Judge held that GUIs and their look and feel could not be patented or copyrighted, so it seems like that could be used as a precedent in their favor on this lawsuit.
When a sliding company makes a bold and aggressive attack on the market leader, don't look for a direct link between that company and the attack.
Instead, look to other companies who would benefit most from such an attack.
Creative do many things, and attacking Apple in the player market is a very high risk gamble. If they lose they will basically have destroyed their player business - no-one is going to buy a product from a bunch of losers. If they win, they will still have a problem - people like Apply and attacking them like this just looks evil.
Cui bono? Who benefits?
Someone rich, who wants to take over the player market, and has a history of launching proxy wars to harass and intimidate its competitors, on feeble or completely false pretexts.
Someone who has been fighting hard to get software patents enabled in Europe, through proxy groups such as the BSA and C4C.
This opinion is simply a gut feeling. Are there any recent reports of deals between Microsoft and Creative Labs that indicate money flowing?
My blog
Apple restricts back-up copies
.AIFF/.WAV if you want, and edit away. Or am I missing something. Or are you just really pissed at this whole two-step process? (or just unaware of it, perhaps?)
Strange, I've found it very easy to burn the music to CD's, and thus "back it up." Also, one can archive the files quite easily, requiring only that they be activated when used on a new computer (though this can get complicated, if you've maxed out your authorized computers...but there are ways to fix this as well). The point: one can fairly easily back up one's iTMS purchased music.
Oh, and it is of course trivial to back up the non-DRM'd portion of one's music library, which for most people is probably damn near all of it.
They restrict converting to other formats
If by "restrict" you mean "make it a two-step process," then yeah. Burn to CD. Re-rip. Done. And you say that as if any other online music store (other than certain Russian stores of questionable legality) that sells RIAA-label music makes this any easier. To the best of my knowledge, they do not.
They only work with Apple brand DRM
Yep, and I don't freakin' care. Besides, the first two seem to establish that you don't like DRM in general anyway...so you like Microsoft's *better* or something? This is just stupid. Next!
They restrict compatiblity with other players.
Yeah, because MP3 is such a proprietary format. Or are you still taking about DRM'd songs? There has never been a need for iPod users to use AAC, except if they want to buy from iTMS. For those of us that just rip CD's, we have the option of doing it in MP3, which is pretty much universal...we can even use a different application to do it.
If you're just mad because you can't buy music on iTMS and put it on your Zen or whatever, I don't care. From the sound of the rest of this, you are probably also one of the people who complains about the prices in the iTMS, and the DRM, and probably wouldn't buy music from there to put on a different player anyway...so you're just arguing to argue.
No editing of the songs.
You mean, like from within iTunes? Because you can certainly burn them to CD and then re-rip them as
Oh, and let's not forget that all of these DRM restrictions were largely decided upon by the RIAA, rather than Apple. I think I should stop replying to AC's, but at the same time when I see something stupid written, I have to tear it apart like a junkyard dog with a piece of meat.
Whats up with all the Gandhi stuff lately?? Has /. finally outsourced commenting on articles to India???
I got nothin'
I think Jesus held prior art to that idea long before Ghandi... Too bad he did not patent it.
The first iPod shipped October 23, 2001. I can't believe that Apple managed to design, prototype, test, mass produce, market and ship the iPod in 9 months.
:-)
They're good, aren't they?
Seriously, they didn't develop the hardware, they bought it. They developed the software in a few months in 2001. And the patent is about the software.
At least that's the chronology on this page.
It seems to me that Apple shouldn't even need to prove prior art to kill this patent where it stands -- the defense that the invention is obvious, and therefore unpatentable, should be all they need.
To prove "obviousness," you need to show that the invention would have been "obvious" to one with "ordinary skill in the art" at the time of the application of the patent -- in this case, back in 2001. Of course, the way you show that is by showing what a person of "ordinary skill in the art" would have known in 2001, and you do that by digging up experts who can testify as to the ordinary skill in the art, and by digging up textbooks and articles and papers and everything else. In essence, you need the "prior art" to prove "obviousness," so you can't separate out the two like you suggest.
Legal obviousness is a pain in the ass to prove, because it's so fuzzy -- it's much easier to find a patent invalid based on prior art, if the prior art exists. Another thing to remember is that even if art appears to be prior art, if the applicant or the examiner referred to the art during prosecution, yet still issued the patent, then it is presumed that such art may not qualify as invalidating prior art under 35 USC 102. So even if you find something that looks like prior art, you need to go to that patent itself and the patent's prosecution history to figure out if the art was relied on in prosecution, and is therefore essentially (although there are exceptions) useless to prove invalidity.
When you are attacking a patent, you pull out all of the stops -- you attack on noninfringement (trying to show that you are not infringing, even if the patent is valid), invalidity (that the patent is invalid and never should have been issued, either because of prior art or obviousness), unenforceability (saying that even if the patent is valid, it's not enforceable, for any number of reasons), and, if you have any reason at all to believe that it might be true, inequitable conduct (basically accusing the inventor or his lawyers of lying to the USPTO to get the patent issued).
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
... but Jesus didn't patent it when he said it.
Everyone is born right-handed; only the greatest overcome it
They should have started with a small company like Neuros that couldn't efford to defend them selves. With a precedent setting case under their belt they would stand a better chance against Apple.
The format is not proprietary, but the algorithms to create files in the format are. The Fraunhofer corporation visciously defends its mp3 patent against any software on the market incorporating an mp3 encoder.
To those in the world of proprietary software, with companies available to pay royalty fees, it is a meaningless distinction. But to those of us in the free software community, the fraunhofer patent is a major annoyance, because we can't legally ship mp3 encoders in our favorite distros/oses. It's one of the many motivations in developing the ogg vorbis codec and flac.
[/pedant mode]If what you meant was something like "the mp3 format is ubiquitous, unrestricted, and unencumbered for most people", then I apologize, as that is definitely true.
- Concertina (peeved that iTunes does not support more open formats)