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Creative To Defend Interface Patent Rights
wild_berry writes "At the London Lauch of their new 'Zen Vision: M' portable media player, Creative Labs boss Sim Wong Hoo told the BBC that he plans to defend their August 2005 patent for interfaces in portable music devices." From the article: "Creative chairman Sim Wong Hoo told the BBC News website that the company was already talking to various parties about the patent but refused to be drawn on specifics. 'We will pursue all manufacturers that use the same navigation system,' said Mr Sim. 'This is something we will pursue aggressively. Hopefully this will be friendly, but people have to respect intellectual property.'"
I had a sudden thought when reading over this summary. Companies say that they are only patenting software/interfaces/whatever as a defensive strategy. Knowing how some justifications work ("I was only following orders." and such), I wonder how long it is before statements such as "We were defending our right to profit from our patents" become commonplace. I mean, after all, if you have something like a patent, just about everything you do in terms of litigation is 'defense' of that patent, whether you sue them or they sue you.
I have bought their mp3 player, speakers, webcams and a few other items. It is clear to
me that they really make very bad products. I have already settled on never buying
another Creative product.
This latest patent scam merely affirms my beliefs.
Hopefully this will be friendly, but people have to respect intellectual property.
Ah yes, but do we have to respect intellectual bullshit? To allow someone to patent "the way files are organised and navigated on a player using a using a hierarchy of menus" is about as logical as allowing someone to patent the way of transportation that involves putting the rearward foot infront of the front foot and then repeating.
Come on, for as long as there has been more than one menu on ANY electronic device they have had the need to put them into a hierarchy, right? Oh, I know, let's patent the use of language on a display! No, there is no prior art, because my patent is only related to this new kind of display... I think it's called LCD.
Most companies get defensive patents not to " defending our right to profit from our patents", but to have something to countersue with if they get sued, or to have something to get into cross-licensing agreements to avoid even more lawsuits. Truth is, patents are a real pain - and if it wasn't for defensive purposes, most companies wouldn't bother.
So in truth, people are forced into the system even if they think patnets are evil. (Which I do)
essay: A Violent Protest Against Patents
Two reasons:
1) Press. Apple still dominates the press, and Creative has no ads on TV that I've seen anywhere, while even my daughter, who hates Eminem, catches herself singing along with the iPod commercials. Apple also has bands ready, willing and able to release songs for their commercials - and those songs become hits. Apple his mindshare, and Creative doesn't. This lawsuit gets Creative some press, press that they're not paying for with marketing dollars, although it wouldn't be hard to qualify this entire lawsuit as marketing expense.
2) The off-chance that it might work. I think Creative fails to recognize, though, that their shareholders are likely to be less than impressed if Creative's main source of income in the DAP market is from iPod royalties on an interface patent. If you were a Creative stockholder, would you want to invest in a company that gets a very, very small percentage of profits from a competitor's product sale through an interface patent royalty; or would you rather invest in the competitor making the better product as a whole, and the larger overall profit from it? Oh, yeah, and are you willing to risk the time, expense and uncertainty of a legal battle?
It's sad, really. Creative makes some fantastic audio products, but they're primarily oriented around input/output for PC's. I can understand why they entered the DAP market, I really can, but to compete on patent assertions instead of product niche? Disappointing.
Lots of comments about, "iPod did it first." Umm, forget about the trees for a second folks. Look at the forest. Creative labs got a patent for hierarchical traversal of a structured content repository. Have any of you used a file browser? iPod didn't do it first and this isn't about iPod versus Creative. This is about the USPTO granting fiat monopolies (patents) to anybody who adds a new word to existing public domain technical innovation; in this case "directory browser + MP3 player". The problem isn't who should have rights to the idea, but that the idea should not have been patentable.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I find it strange that iPod would manage to hold the 90% of the marketshare with its features alone, at this point. There's other DAPs out there, that offer similar or sometimes even better features, and yet, if you asked your average Joe what alternatives to iPod he knows, he'd look at you funny and say "iPod nano?"
IPod not only managed to deliver a better product, they also managed to popularize it... Before iPods became popular, no mp3 players were popular - no flash player reached the level of popularity of ipods. IPods became "hip" and "cool" and that's part of their success. And that's also why Creative doesn't like Apple.
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