Creative preps for more Zen patent lawsuits to "protect" itself

Fresh off their victory in getting Apple to cough up a hundred million dollars for potential infringement on their Zen patent (which outlines hierarchical menu systems for portable media devices), it should come as no surprise that Creative's legal team is mounting up, and the company has issued a statement that they intend to pursue cases of the patent's infringement elsewhere. The President of Creative Labs Inc., Craig McHugh, told DowJones, "There many MP3 player makers in the US market that are currently using the Zen technology, and there are also several cellphones that are music-enabled that are using the Zen patent," following up with, "We are also ready to take the necessary steps to protect our intellectual property." Yeah, we're sure they are; but as Steve said himself, "Creative is very fortunate to have been granted this early patent..." It's obvious Creative is going to leverage this newfound empowerment over the portable media player device industry to the best of their legal abilities, so we can only hope that something as ridiculous as the Zen patent will eventually be overturned by the USPTO due to prior art, or be rejected because as an invention it's a little far-reaching to be fairly exercised.

[Ben @ Aug 30th 2006 3:45PM]

did Apple just paid Creative to sue the rest of the world ? lol

[Riza @ Aug 30th 2006 3:46PM]

Apple just gave Creative $100million.

Now Creative has plenty of money to pay layers to go after all of Apples competitors. Great move Apple.

So now while Creative is taking out all the iPod cometitors Apple will just keep gaining market share.

[Alex @ Aug 30th 2006 3:57PM]

Gay.

I am ruling out purchasing a Creative because of this. Cowon A2 ftw

[G. Snyder @ Aug 30th 2006 3:58PM]

me no do english good.

[dave95 @ Aug 30th 2006 4:01PM]

"There many MP3 player makers in the US market that are currently using the Zen technology, and there are also several cellphones that are music-enabled that are using the Zen patent,"

It's both laughable and embarrassing to here him say "Zen Technology" as though it's a Great Invention.

Patent office is a joke http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Patent_and_Trademark_Office

[aboriginal @ Aug 30th 2006 4:18PM]

Creative loses design patent due to lack of unique originality, Apple wants 100 million back.

[daniel Okin @ Aug 30th 2006 4:31PM]

this is ridiculous. how can you patent a hierarchical system when one has existed on devices for years? i mean, windows XP start menu = hierarchical system. nested folders are a heirarchical system. this is ridiculous.

[sir-ricealot @ Aug 30th 2006 4:36PM]

@ #2: Well I guess that would make sense since they're officially making ipod accessories now? win/win? :S

[p-diddy @ Aug 30th 2006 4:57PM]

*sigh* I hate to be the voice of reason here, but whether you think the Zen patent is novel and non-obvious is not really an issue. Apple settled for $100 million. Take a minute and chew on this: if there was ANY WAY Apple could have shown prior art that meets the legal standard to invalidate the Zen patents, or show how obvious it was at the time the patent was filed, and it would have cost them less than $100 million to do so, don't you think they would have done so?

Here's a bit o' information for you: a patent lawsuit, run by very expensive attorneys, will cost you about $2 million to take it all the way through trial. That means that Apple didn't think they would be able to find prior art even if they spent an extra $98 million lookng for it. While the PTO may issue some questionable patents here and there, if something is not novel or is obvious, it's challengeable in court. Apple apparently didn't think it was worth the risk and paid out $100 million. That means they were pretty scared of losing, which likely means they couldn't find anything to invalidate it.

Patents are found invalid all the time (well, depending on where you filed the lawsuit (I'm looking at you Eastern division of Texas)). Apple didn't think they could win this.

And I bet not a single person here has actually looked at the claims of the patent. They just think that the concept is obvious, so the patent is invalid. Yeah, it's dick to say, but probably 90% of the people here don't know jack about patent law, so seriously, before posting, please consider how ignorant you're going to sound to people that do. Yes, we read engadget too.

-p-

[Raider @ Aug 30th 2006 5:06PM]

Apple will get its money back slowly from Creative making accessories for the iPod... under the iPod licensed accessory program. Meanwhile Creative gets to go after other DAP manufacturers and finds that this is a way to finally make more money, than they have been making.

[tovaac @ Aug 30th 2006 5:17PM]

There's one thing that's bothering me: didn't Apple sue Creative back? What happened to that?

[Brian @ Aug 30th 2006 5:27PM]

I'll never buy another Creative product again.

[Pip @ Aug 30th 2006 5:43PM]

Apple more than likely dropped whatever cases it had against Creative.

The fact that this states they are going after cell phones as well will probably be their demise. Phones had this layout for their musical ring tones far longer than the first Creative MP3 player has existed.

[Brad @ Aug 30th 2006 6:10PM]

The Heirarchical system in the patent essentially said that on a device such as a portable music player, the interface would allow you to browse through the music by viewing them as a heirarchical list of Artists, Albums, Styles, etc. Creative not only patented it first, they made it first, which is why they have every right to the patent. Their patent was pending long before the iPod came out, which copied their interface. You can only blame Apple for that. The reason you think their patent should be invalid is because it is used in all players today, and you figure it must have been in a portable music player somewhere in the past. You may be wrong.

[haythem @ Aug 30th 2006 6:13PM]

i guess this is their new business plan to make money?

[crescentdave @ Aug 30th 2006 6:22PM]

I'm amused at the number of posters who OBVIOUSLY haven't looked at the original Creative hierarchy which was then COPIED by Apple. It only looks "inevitable" because it was simplicity personified and well thought out.

I guess the fact some other company, some other entity other than Apple could have some software design elegance is upsetting to uninformed applets.

Reality can be so ... real, you know?

[JinKazama @ Aug 30th 2006 6:24PM]

If Creative gets aggressive about this litigation it could actually increase apple's dominance in the mp3 player market. Apple can afford a 100 million, can iriver or SanDisk? If not, apple becomes the only game in town outside of Creative and we all know how that battle has played out so far.

[Will @ Aug 30th 2006 6:39PM]

"I'm amused at the number of posters who OBVIOUSLY haven't looked at the original Creative hierarchy which was then COPIED by Apple. It only looks "inevitable" because it was simplicity personified and well thought out.

I guess the fact some other company, some other entity other than Apple could have some software design elegance is upsetting to uninformed applets.

Reality can be so ... real, you know?"

The creative heiarchy that apple copied... that happens to look exactly like a mobile version of the NeXT heirarchy Mr. Job's team invented in the late 80's?

[dave95 @ Aug 30th 2006 6:44PM]

Software design elegance? Well thought out? Give me a break!

Nothing about this patent is well thought out nor is it original. Go back in history, you will see Apple Lisa had a hierarchy file structure (1980?), NeXT also had the same file structure and it was then incorporated into OSX.

Lisa GUI, Six picture down http://home.san.rr.com/deans/prototypes.html

[tekdroid @ Aug 30th 2006 6:51PM]

it's a dog-eat-dog world out there.

Creative should be supported. After all, they gave us the X-Fi, which, as we know, makes mp3s sound better than the original CDs.

(or something)
Surely that's to be applauded :)

[Jeremy @ Aug 30th 2006 7:15PM]

All suits were wrapped up in the settlement. IMHO the 98 million p-diddy says couldn't find prior art was actually spent on using Creative as there mobster roughing the competition. I mean NeXT should have been prior art and Apple should have found that.

[dave95 @ Aug 30th 2006 7:22PM]

To shed a little light on both UI.

This was the player the patent originally was pertaining to - Original Nomad Zen, look at the UI:
http://www.x-computers.sk/data/cennik/mp3/info/img/full/zen_xtra.jpg

This was the original iPod UI, not much change today (x Color):
http://www.theistore.com/images/ipodmodels/shopby_1st.jpg

And this is the iPod next to the Zen Vision: M today. As you can see, the Creative UI started to Morph into Apple's UI while the iPod UI stayed the same, just added color.
http://blog.fotogenia.info/wp-content/ipod-vs-zen.jpg

[p-diddy @ Aug 30th 2006 7:26PM]

>>
Lisa GUI, Six picture down http://home.san.rr.com/deans/prototypes.html

UGH! That is exactly my point! That does not look like an interface to a portable music player! Nowhere does it say artist, album, etc. "Prior art" like that is not prior art. That shows a way to browse a file syste, not a library of music. YOU may think it's obvious based on 20/20 hindsight, but that doesn't mean it was obvious when the patent was filed. There is a mental leap that must be made to say "you know the way we organize files could also be applied to a library opf music..."

@ Ferny, while you do raise a good point, that Apple wants the money from creative in terms of licensing, I still think Apple would have preferred not to fork over $100 million if they could avoid it by invalidating the patent. Creative likely makes more money from their iPod accessories than from their music players. As such, even if the patent was invalidated, Creative themselves probably would keep making the accessories.

Yes, that is all wild speculation on my part.

-p-

[tristanfey @ Aug 30th 2006 7:35PM]

"If Creative gets aggressive about this litigation it could actually increase apple's dominance in the mp3 player market. Apple can afford a 100 million, can iriver or SanDisk? If not, apple becomes the only game in town outside of Creative and we all know how that battle has played out so far."

You may be correct in that the other companies would probably be harder impacted with a $100 million payout. Lets say I started a company 2 years ago that sells DAPs. So far, in my company's history, I have only begun to break even and start making a profit. By your line of thinking I would have to make a payout that my profits come nowhere near reaching and I am out of business.

But what you are not taking into account is that the payout amount is affected by the sales gained devices using Creative's patent and potential future sales (if they choose to continue using the hierarchy). Lets use the following market share totals as a very rough guide (these are only Q2 of 2006 provided by NPD Survey) of what others may have to pay out:

Company - Percent market share
Apple - 75.6 percent
SanDisk - 9.7 percent
Creative - 4.3 percent
Samsung - 2.5 percent
Sony - 1.9 percent

Using these as base figures, Sandisk would have to pay $13M, Samsung $3.5M and Sony 2.5M. I am pretty sure none of these companies are going to worry too much about these types of amounts.

[crescentdave @ Aug 30th 2006 10:50PM]

Thanks for the pix Dave95- and supporting my original post. It's pretty obvious no one who understands the litigation is talking about "hierarchical" menus in GENERAL. It's a SPECIFIC way of organizing and depicting menus- quite different, by the way, and thank you for the proof- from the Lisa gui. Good work :).

Thanks also for the head to head post of the latest iterations: the Zen is obviously clearer, easier to read and suggests a 3-D feel.

[Markus @ Aug 31st 2006 12:17AM]

All the prior art in the world wouldn't have helped apple. Its like the Research In Motion /blackberry patent fight. The patent office basically said all the patents from NTP are bogus but it will take a year to invalidate them. In the meantime under the law RIM was in voilation of the patents and the patent holder can ask for a injuntion to prevent any more blackberries from being sold.

The judge said that because the patent was issued it didn't matter and RIM had to cough up a few hundred million. Creative could have got apple to remove the ipod from the market if they didn't make a deal.

[Dude @ Aug 31st 2006 2:25AM]

Lol. Last time I checked the Lisa and Mac were not portable music players. Carry on legal newbs, carry on!

[Ferny @ Aug 31st 2006 4:45AM]

@p-diddy

maybe we don't know patent law as well as you think we should be still it could be that maybe apple went for the settlement because they would now slowly defeat creative with the partnership. creative making ipod products and paying the apple tax is probable worth apple to pay the money and have the chance to regain it which is why I think they settled.

[Perrey Z. @ Aug 31st 2006 8:46AM]

What Creative wants is to get rid of every competitor out of their way in order to "protect" their intellectual property. To be honest i haven't seen a Creative product in person so i don't know how good or bad they are only thru online catalogs which doesn't say much to favor them. And when I'm ready to make my decision and purchase one of these gizmos, you can be sure it won't be from Creative or Apple.

[p-diddy @ Aug 31st 2006 9:38AM]

wth is with the re-ordering of posts? Ferny's was originally _before_ my post, hence the "@ferny," but now it's after. Huh??

-p-

[ueseven @ Aug 31st 2006 10:56AM]

Let's take an example, I saw Apple's Lisa file browser interface and put it on a TV and because it's better for the words to be larger, I'll just show 1 screen at a time. To enhance the user interaction and comprehension, I scroll the whole screen to the left as I'm drilling down the hierarchy, scroll to the right as I go up. Can be patented?
This communication to the user is simple yet effective and it's obvious it's taken from Lisa, NeXT, OS X.
Music in MP3 player are just files. Hierarchical menus are not a new thing in year 2000. A MP3 player is like a computer, it has a CPU, file system and memory - just different in size (including the screen as well). Since the screen is small, I'll make full use of it.
The Zen patent is not original and it's the patent officers that created this dispute. It gives me an impression they are quite IT ignorant.

[Magus @ Aug 31st 2006 12:42PM]

Can't people just read the damn pattent before they go spouting off nonsense. DYNAMIC HIEARCHIAL MENU.
IE the files do not exist in folder structured trees such as
Music->artist->song folders
They are all located at root>
The patent auto generates the directory structure on the spot based off the ID3 tag info.
Hense the major diference along with the fact that it was geared towards a portable device.
Sure its simple now everyone does it.

[ChrisXS @ Aug 31st 2006 12:56PM]

PDiddy: IANAL.
RUAL or a rapper/producer?

[linoox @ Sep 1st 2006 2:01PM]

If you can't beat 'em, sue 'em!

[Brick @ Sep 1st 2006 6:45PM]

@ hay. the definition of a business is something that provides people with something to make money. what was their strategy before?

[michaelangel0 @ Sep 4th 2006 2:15AM]

wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!

youre starting to talk about GUI. Thats theme. The patent and the whole news is about the hierarchical concept....

Whether all PMPs tend to have a similar graphical feel is a question of modern attractiveness factors, who would wanna design a dull grey UI looking like 1970?


Next, i gotta say the whole HYPE by all those guys getting themselves iPods and givin em up after a few months or when they *break* is making me sick. Why, you're getting one because everyone has it? because it was one of the first to get broad distribution? Give *me* a break. I've had one single player from creative, its battery lasts for days even when playing non stop at work, its easy to use and honestly, i don't have ANY problem connecting it to anyones pc. Try and have that with apple? Now fine, thats MHO and everyone has his own taste, but i wonder if anyone is actually putting that very taste into play when talking about the iPod.

Am I ever getting creative products again? Yes, Yes, a million times yes, i got a soundcard and a Zen, and i wouldnt trade it for other brands if you paid me. (save spec upgrades ;-)

talking about quitting creative for this move is like saying you'll stop getting fuel from this or that oil company. making a difference? not a drop in the ocean. (sorry for the expression!)

corporate world is like that anyway...

[lasla @ Sep 4th 2006 10:42AM]

My backup phone is an old T28 Ericsson providing the exact functionality that Creative patented in 2005. Only it was made at least since 1999. (see ericsson annual report 1999 page 19).

“Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.”
-Plato

Thank you patent office for giving new life to Plato.