Creative wins patent fight
p2pnet.net News:- It’s so far been a good week and bad week for Creative.
On the one hand, it shipped around 3,700 Neeon music players – with the W32.Wullik.B@mm mass-mailing worm attached.
But on the other, it’s been awarded a patent for the interface used on many digital music players …
… including the iPod.
Creative was one of the first companies to produce mp3 players but has lost out to Apple says the BBC, going on:
“In November, Creative boss Sim Wong Hoo said he aimed to out market his competitors, saying the MP3 war had started.”
Apple’s iPod was announced 13 months after Zen has started shipping its Nomad Jukebox, based on the user interface covered by its Zen Patent."
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win – Mohandas Gandhi
See:-
mass-mailing worm – Creative Zen Neeons: with virus, August 30, 2005
BBC – Creative wins MP3 player patent, August 30, 2005
August 30th, 2005 at 11:15 pm
abstract from the actual patent:
“A method, performed by software executing on the processor of a portable music playback device, that automatically files tracks according to hierarchical structure of categories to organize tracks in a logical order. A user interface is utilized to change the hierarchy, view track names, and select tracks for playback or other operations.”
This interface patent also applies to several programs which were prior to their patent, such as:
itunes,winamp, musicmatch, *continues into infinity*
yet again the USPTO fails.. and if apple took this to court they could easily nullify the ability of anyone to patent this concept.