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Creative Sues Apple Over 'Zen Patent'

Monday, May 15th, 2006 at 4:35 PM - by

Creative Technology on Monday filed a lawsuit against Apple asking for an injunction and damages against the iPod maker for "willful infringement of the Zen Patent," which refers to the technology found in the company's line of Zen MP3 players.

According to MarketWatch, Creative also filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission, claiming that Apple has violated a tariff act by importing iPods and iPod nanos that infringe on the "Zen patent."

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A guest said: (hide)

Mon May 15, 2006 4:59 pm

OK, so who didn't see this coming?

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Tiger said:

member since 17 Jun 2003 with 1018 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Mon May 15, 2006 5:47 pm

Next thing you know, they'll sue for Apple stealing their Feng Shui.

They patented this interface in 2005? Hell, our iPods are older than that. How can they even hope to win this one?

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A guest said: (hide)

Mon May 15, 2006 6:39 pm

How does the Zen compare to the iPod? Are they saying play,pause,stop,forward are patented? Wouldn't that apply to every player ever made? How does one claim a patent to something they didn't develop,build, and market? And if they did, why aren't they building it? Because they're full of it. Maybe Apple can run Creative into bankruptcy in court fees and finally get rid of them once and for all. Somehow I just don't see this going in favor of Creative.

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A guest said: (hide)

Mon May 15, 2006 6:47 pm

I suspect that we will see retaliation here. It could get very dirty.

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Mikuro said:

member since 15 Jun 2002 with 457 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Mon May 15, 2006 6:49 pm

Tiger wrote:
Next thing you know, they'll sue for Apple stealing their Feng Shui.

They patented this interface in 2005? Hell, our iPods are older than that. How can they even hope to win this one?

The patent was filed in January 2001 (the first iPod was not released until later that year). It was not issued until 2005, but I'm not sure if that's relevant. These things always go at a snail's pace, after all.

The patent covers the hierarchical sorting of music files based on metadata in a portable device. If the courts deem it valid, it certainly seems like it would cover the iPod.

Come to think of it, doesn't Apple hold similar patents for the iTunes-style interface? This is going to get ugly.

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A guest said: (hide)

Mon May 15, 2006 6:52 pm

2005 was the patent issue date. The file date is the one that matters. For this patent 6,928,433 the file date was January 5, 2001.

And it's not play, pause etc, read the patent. The first claim is:

1. A method of selecting at least one track from a plurality of tracks stored in a computer-readable medium of a portable media player configured to present sequentially a first, second, and third display screen on the display of the media player, the plurality of tracks accessed according to a hierarchy, the hierarchy having a plurality of categories, subcategories, and items respectively in a first, second, and third level of the hierarchy, the method comprising: selecting a category in the first display screen of the portable media player; displaying the subcategories belonging to the selected category in a listing presented in the second display screen; selecting a subcategory in the second display screen; displaying the items belonging to the selected subcategory in a listing presented in the third display screen; and accessing at least one track based on a selection made in one of the display screens.

In other words it's the iPod navigation. And I understand Jobs demanded that it take no more than 4 "clicks" to find a song. Just like what is described in the claim.

The question is, is it novel and is it inventive. The claims history on this one might be interesting. I'll bet they tried to claim a very broad navigation and the Pushover office (I mean Patent office) made them narrow it.

Also, did they file a foreign patent? I'll search the PCTs. The Japanese and Europeans are much more demanding in their patents. If they failed in those places it can be a help invalidate the patent in the U.S.

Jeeze if you're a lawyer for Apple I bet you don't worry about job security!

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LaurieF said:

member since 15 Jun 2001 with 3547 posts, TMO Forum Mod, send him a message or view his profile

Mon May 15, 2006 7:06 pm

The novelty is arguable. In 1980 I created, without reference to anything else, a multiply-depthed [step right up; get your neologisms here] hierarchical menu system on an IBM mainframe, in Cobol (!), that allowed the user to select a timeseries from a plurality of econometric data. (Damn - should have patented it, but it really belonged to the Department of Statistics). This menuing system was for some time in the public domain as part of Stats' INFOS system.

I don't claim that I was the first programmer ever to do this; nevertheless this is one instance of prior art. The only difference here that I can see is that the patent refers specifically to a music player.

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notarysojac said:

member since 15 May 2006 with 1 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Mon May 15, 2006 9:32 pm

Perhaps 'Creative' figured that they'd get more 'free ink' and publicity via the cost of a lawsuit rather than by spending on advertising?

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A guest said: (hide)

Mon May 15, 2006 11:35 pm

creative posted SGD 181 million dollars loss last quarter. its no wonder they are sueing apple now hoping they can recuperate. down right dirty

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A guest said: (hide)

Tue May 16, 2006 12:11 am

The iPod interface is no different to the NeXT, and OS X column style browser. Go on, set a finder window to column view, and squeeze it down to 1 column, there you have it, the iPod browser.

Seems like a pretty huge hunk of prior art.

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A guest said: (hide)

Tue May 16, 2006 12:12 am

It takes a lot of balls or desperation (I vote for the latter) to sue Apple on menu-related user interface patents. Apple has prior art up the wazoo in this field.

Creative is playing with fire on this one. I wonder how long it will take for Apple to accuse Creative of violating about eleventy-nine Apple patents that date back 20 years or more? This is commonly what happens in the to-and-fro of a patent p*ssing match.

One of the reasons RIM had such a hard time defending itself was that it was up against a company that didn't actually make a product that would make it vulnerable to counter claims. Creative has no such advantage.

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A guest said: (hide)

Tue May 16, 2006 11:59 am

I personally do a lot of work with technology patents, it doesnt matter if the patent was filed in 2001, if Apple was already working on a technology, and I'm sure they were, then the patent is either too vague or invalid. Either way it won't hold merit

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A guest said: (hide)

Fri Jun 09, 2006 9:48 pm

all comments from apple fan boys..if apple was awarded the patent im sure i would hear apple fanboys ranting on about how creative stole apples patent

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