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Creative Sues Apple
E IS mC(Square) writes "Looks like Apple's legal problems are not yet over. ZDNet reports that Creative has sued Apple over their iPod interface. From the article: 'Creative Technology said Monday that it has filed two legal actions against Apple Computer, charging the popular iPod infringes on its patented technology. ... In both cases, Creative says that the iPod and iPod Nano infringe on a patent the company has for the interface in its Zen media player, a patent granted last August.'"
Not very surprising. Will probably be modded flamebait, but..
Creative is used to having a hold on their market and killing off competition (ie, SoundStorm) by buying out companies or technologies they depend on. The result is them making sub-quality products and incremental upgrades that are *just* good enough for people to bother, and selling them for top dollar. And then shafting the customer with bad support on all but their latest product line.
So I can see why they don't know how to play fair and compete. They don't know how to handle Apple any other way.
The column view (browser view) has been in NeXTSTEP since 1989. Apple acquired NeXT in the mid-90s. I do not say that Apple holds patent on it nor invented it (Xerox Smalltalk class browser?). I just want to say, that the column has been here for a while and it was somehow related to Apple too.
:-) It is the same to drill-down by region, store and date or by genre, artist and album. They are just different terms.
Moreover! Filtering data using a column view is also quite old. It has been used in data-warehousing as way of drilling-down. In the music player it is nothing more, nothing less: it is drilling-down through your song database. Just ask Bill Inmon or Ralph Kimball
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Patent No. 6,928,433 was filed in January 2001. Before the iPod was unveiled in October.
The site isn't available at the moment (Maximum number of users has been reached.) but it looked like a fairly typical old-method-but-for-new-technology patent. You know the type... "auction bidding... but on the Internet!".
No, the iPod did not come out before the Creative's "high capacity" units. Creative's large storage mp3 players were on the market for almost 18 months before the iPod was publically announced, and with an interface that was almost identical to the "revolutionary" iPod interface. At the time, Zens were available in 5 and 10GB - while the iPod was 10, 15, and later 20.
The iPod was slimer, used a li-poly battery (instead of lithium-ion, resulting in many upset users) and the "click-wheel" technology, rather than traditional buttons. Other than that, they were about the same.
And the patent for the "hierarchical" (and lets face it, really really obvious) way of organizing music on a mobile player is what they're settling on. The filing date is much earlier, though it was pushed back and re-examined many times. That whole "Artist->Album->Song" method? Creative "invented" it, and God help you if you try and use it yourself in a mobile player and subsequently gain market share over them. Nevermind that it's the fundamental way that files have been stored and sorted on computers since...well...since we left punch cards behind, slapping "mobile" on the patent makes it new! So does slapping "online" apparently...
They sued now because prior to this, they'd been in negotiations with Apple for an out-of-court settlement for patent infringement. Apple finally flat out refuesd (on the grounds that the patent was "bullshit"), and left Creative little other options for taking their slice of someone else's pie. They'll probably hope that after a bit of bad press and a seemingly losing battle, Apple will decide to settle just to get on with it. Hopefully Apple won't cave, because as much as I hate those stupid white headphones, I hate patent mongering more.