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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.'"
surely apple has several years of prior art in the iPod, which begs the question: why is creative bothering, other than to abuse the legal system in an attempt to get an injunction against iPod sales during a crucial retail season...
"It applies to the way music tracks are organised and navigated on a player through a hierarchy using three or more successive screens."
So if Creative wins this suit, should you also be sued for using the buttons on/off, play, pause, stop, rewind and fast-forward? Or should you have to rename them iniate/power down, engage, hesitate, halt, go-back and go-forth?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
So they say Apple has to respect their intellectual property. It is curious, since in most business contracts, when one party pays up, the other gets something valuable in return. What does Apple get from paying? They have thought up the interface themseleves, and Creative's only claim on it is that they have thought of it first. If Apple has never seen Creative's patent, what exactly would they be paying for? Creative did no work for them and gave them nothing of value and yet Apple has to pay up anyway? Usually this is called "extortion". In the modern times we call it the "patent system".
Please don't buy products from this company. They look to sell your their product and then hang you out to dry. I payed $300 for the Zen Touch, under the impression that there would be firmware updates to increase the useability (scrolling is the biggest pain ever....its very "touchy" to be exact...move your finger 1mm and it moves 2 songs, then move it another mm and it moves 4 songs. Still can't figure out how to reliably select a song without missing it a few times on the menu.), and 2 years later, its still a nuissance to scroll with.
Its too bad the iPod's form factor has pretty much been the same since coming out in 2001.
A search of ThinkSecret's archives puts a start date on rumors of the video iPod around the time of MacWord Expo 2003.
The patent system is ridiculous, no doubt about it.
However, in order for change to happen, the lawmakers need to know of the blasphemy of our current patent system. Your lawmakers do not read Slashdot, but you do. Write your lawmakers and tell them what you think about ridiculous patent disputes such as this one. Creative may own this patent, but it's just an extension of previous patents. It's not really a new idea as it is an old idea using buttons.
The GUI has been around for years, and countless companies have copied it. So what gives Creative Labs the right to walk around and say 'Oh, this is ours!' when it's really an extension of a menu-based GUI. The only new thing it does is use a button for navigation. Files and folders have been around forever, and they will always be around. Windows and Mac OS have all used hierarchical file systems at one point in time.
There's tons of prior art on this patent.
It's also known Creative is an IP whoring company. Creative has bought out so many competitors (Aureal, Ensoniq, et al.) and pursued a lot of legal action against other soundcard manufacturers that even dared to infringe on Creative Lab's patents. We're lucky EAX2 is even available nowadays.
I for one would love to see Creative buried in the ground.
Does anyone remember the dispute with John Carmack, in which they decided to enforce a software patent covering a shading algorithm just as Doom 3 was about to ship... unless he added enhanced support for their sound card? He was forced to relent.
patnet... now THERE's a concept.... ;)
Menus on iPods are not new art. They're old art on a new device - but even the device qua a little computer device is old art. The whole issue is crap.
Right now, probably 99% of the things that I or any of you people might dream up independently is covered by a patent somewhere - whether or not the patent is being used, the idea is being used, or the idea is even useful.
Most things IMNSHO do not qualify as intellectual property... because most things are perfectly obvious to people knowledgeable in whatever area of expertise is being looked at. Otherwise some SOBs will patent eg linked lists, stacks, queues and every other perfectly obvious idea. Then other SOBs will patent eg linked lists of Integers, followed by linked lists of integers, followed by linked lists of cIntegers. Hopefully you get the point.
If not, wait until under the current regime some other SOB files a patent for "...a white box of dimensional ratio approx 10:4:10 (H:W:D) containing works for the purpose of performing programmable calculations and displaying results on a CRT..."
The patent system was not intended to used as an anticompetitive tool.
I say, and without a hint of irony nor an EFF manifesto on my bookshelf and having never ever owned a Che poster or t-shirt: mark my words there will come a day when the current system and collection of patents will be overthrown because it is fast becoming impossible to do or make anything without the permission of someone else's lawyers. It's the same problem in different clothes that led to several notable revolutions in western Europe & North America.