Slashdot Mirror
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 haven't seen the actual patent, and don't have time to look it up at the moment, but the original Nomad used a series of nested menus for navigation- and was released well before the iPod.
I do believe that the Creative Nomad was released well before the iPod. That said, hierarchial menus date back to, well, to very far back. Certainly before Creative was ever incorporated.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
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.
the iPod is a relative newcomer to the MP3 market. Creative were making hard disk mp3 players long before Apple ever dreamed of them. They were practially the only players on the market in 1999-2000, and they used the same type of heirarchial naviation that the iPod uses.
That's not to say that Creative have a legal case they should be able to press in respect to the patent (for heirarchial display of files by category) as the patent is so f**king obvious that is should never have been granted.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
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.