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Apple Is Accused of Violating Software Patent 503

Posted by Zonk from the i-am-so-suprised dept.
outz writes "And it begins... Creative Technology, a maker of portable music players, has accused Apple Computer of violating a newly granted software patent covering the way users navigate music selections." From the NYT article: "Creative Technology, which is based in Singapore and has United States operations in Milpitas, Calif., said it would consider every option available to defend the patent, including possible legal action. Apple declined to comment on the patent. The patent, which the company calls the Zen Patent, covers Creative's interface for portable players, which allows users to select a song, album or track by navigating a succession of menus. The patent office awarded the patent on Aug. 9." We reported on the granting of the patent a few days ago.
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Apple Is Accused of Violating Software Patent More

Apple Is Accused of Violating Software Patent

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  • Yet Another Bullshit Patent Dispute (Score:5, Insightful)

    by geomon ( 78680 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @12:25PM (#13464862) Homepage Journal
    I know, Creative had it first. You can pull all of the patent information from the last time we discussed this issue but the fact still remains that a patent application date does not establish when an idea was first formulated. The Patent Office can only issue based on what is available, so it will be up to Apple to prove, if it can, that its interface was documented and notarized before Creative. That will mitigate Creative's claim of uniqueness and would change their patent status.

    But that whole discussion pales in comparison to the larger issue of patents granted for things that the entire industry knows has shitloads of prior art attached to it. These defensive patents are what will kill innovation in this country, not piracy as Microsoft and the RIAA will claim.

    Write your representative [slashdot.org] and tell them you DEMAND patent reform.

    • Re:Yet Another Bullshit Patent Dispute (Score:5, Insightful)

      by VaticDart ( 889055 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @12:30PM (#13464899)
      so it will be up to Apple to prove, if it can, that its interface was documented and notarized before Creative. That will mitigate Creative's claim of uniqueness and would change their patent status.

      Considering that Creative was granted a patent for a technology that describes the way just about every GUI, website, and digital media player on the planet uses, that shouldn't be too hard.

      I have never seen the Patent Office's head so far up its own ass to grant something like this.

      • Re:Yet Another Bullshit Patent Dispute (Score:5, Insightful)

        by geomon ( 78680 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @12:32PM (#13464916) Homepage Journal
        I have never seen the Patent Office's head so far up its own ass to grant something like this.

        They will just claim, as they have in the past, that they are understaffed and overwhelmed by the number of patents that they have to deal with.

        Well, tough shit. Get more people on board and raise the application fees. The number of rejected patents due to proof of prior art will make defensive patents disappear.

        • Re:Yet Another Bullshit Patent Dispute (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Friday September 02, 2005 @12:39PM (#13464971) Homepage Journal
          They will just claim, as they have in the past, that they are understaffed and overwhelmed by the number of patents that they have to deal with. Well, tough shit. Get more people on board and raise the application fees. The number of rejected patents due to proof of prior art will make defensive patents disappear.

          The USPTO office has been recently identified as a department which desperately needs reorg and increase in staffing, the odds are it'll continue to get worse until the country, and then the world, are crushed beneath the weight of billions of stupid useless patents which prevent any innovation whatsoever -- exactly the sort of thing patents were meant to protect and encourage.

        • Re:Yet Another Bullshit Patent Dispute (Score:5, Insightful)

          by FortranDragon ( 98478 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @12:46PM (#13465031)
          Well, tough shit. Get more people on board and raise the application fees. The number of rejected patents due to proof of prior art will make defensive patents disappear.

          So, you're going to write your Congresscritter and ask them to allocate a bigger budget to the USPTO? Perhaps ask them to increase your taxes to help out?

          I didn't think so. ;-) Also, I'd point out that raising the application fees doesn't stop big companies from filing as many patents as they do today. It just hurts small inventors.

          • Re:Yet Another Bullshit Patent Dispute (Score:5, Insightful)

            by geomon ( 78680 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @01:00PM (#13465160) Homepage Journal
            So, you're going to write your Congresscritter and ask them to allocate a bigger budget to the USPTO?

            Nope.

            Perhaps ask them to increase your taxes to help out?

            Nope, I recommend application fees. They are a tax on the people who use the system.

            I didn't think so. ;-) Also, I'd point out that raising the application fees doesn't stop big companies from filing as many patents as they do today. It just hurts small inventors.

            Well, I agree that small inventors are hurt by an increase in application fees. But you are incorrect that the fees alone hurt small inventors. There are plenty of ways that a large corporation can screw a small inventor out of their patent: the one Apple might be able to use on Creative is a good one - litigate a claim of prior art.

            So the fees are not the only thing that bury small inventors. And as for the increase in fees? If there are more aggressive and better trained patent examiners on staff at the USPTO, there will be fewer patents for trivial crap that are filed just so some corporation will have a set of defensive patents to unleash in court.

            Will the fees affect large corporations? Hell yes. The company I work for files thousands of patent applications a year. Their whole business is intellectual property. They would shit bricks if the fees were to double.

          • Re:Yet Another Bullshit Patent Dispute (Score:5, Interesting)

            by fossa ( 212602 ) <pat7@gmx.COUGARnet minus cat> on Friday September 02, 2005 @01:06PM (#13465216) Journal

            I like Lessig's (I think) solution: allow multiple competing patent granting companies. The companies must comply with various federal regulations, probably being audited occasionally. Seems like this, done properly, could solve a lot of problems through good old fashioned competition (though it might cause many more problems).

            Or how about this: we already press citizens into jury duty yes? Why not press them into reviewing patent applications? It could be like scientific journal peer review. If a large enough group was surveyed, you shouldn't need to worry about self approval too much. Review a patent? Get a tax break (money that otherwise would have funded patent review anyway).

            Regarding lawyer speak, and the fact that nobody speaks it: if the average professional in the field is unable to understand the language of the patent application, then it probably shouldn't be granted anyway right? (since it isn't disclosing the patented device.)

            • I like it... The review by peers part. I could juyst see corperations getting too bad. I mean, think about the whole domain name fiasco. But extend that to patents which *are* what people make their livelyhoods from.... yikes.

              Peer review is the solution. ...
            • allow multiple competing patent granting companies.

              What? You mean like the credit reporting houses? Yeah, that oughta work. They do such a wonderful job of keeping track of my credit. Consistently and fairly with no hassle at all if they make a mistake. I'm sure that would work just great for patents.

            • Re:Yet Another Bullshit Patent Dispute (Score:5, Interesting)

              by kansas1051 ( 720008 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @04:01PM (#13466567)
              As someone who has been involved in the patent litigation process for several years, I can tell you the last thing *anyone* needs is lay people reviewing patent applications and deciding if something is novel is non-obvious.

              The vast majority (95% plus probably) of juries I have seen in patent cases find infringement regardless of evidence or common sense. Juries will always grant money when given the chance and they would always grant a patent application.

              Also, juries have a hard time determining if shit stinks, let alone trying to determine if widget x is the same as widget y without knowing what a widget is.

              The easiest solution to this mess is to move to a registration system, where patent applications arent examined, and just allow everyone to fight it out in court (which is what happens anyway, but this would be without the presumption that patents are valid).

              • granting patents (Score:3, Insightful)

                by falconwolf ( 725481 )

                The easiest solution to this mess is to move to a registration system, where patent applications arent examined, and just allow everyone to fight it out in court (which is what happens anyway, but this would be without the presumption that patents are valid).

                And what of the individual person who invents something yet doesn't have the deep pockets of a big corporation?

                Falcon

          • Re:Yet Another Bullshit Patent Dispute (Score:5, Insightful)

            by allanc ( 25681 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @01:15PM (#13465298) Homepage
            Raising application fees doesn't stop big companies from filing as many patents, but it does have the following effects:
            1. It allows the USPTO to hire more staffers to determine validity of patents
            2. It allows the USPTO to hire more qualified staffers to determine the validity of patents.

            Which would you rather be, a highly paid programmer or a lowly-paid patent clerk? If they can raise the salary offerred to trained CS people, they could compete with software companies and maybe get a person who'll look at it and say "Um. You're trying to patent a menu. There have been menus since the invention of the video terminal. Denied."

            If you want to do this while also helping the small inventors out, maybe add a "Frivolous patent deposit" to the cost of filing. Then if the patent examiner determines that someone's trying to patent something that any reasonably competent third year CS underground would be likely to whip up in a college project without even thinking about it, the USPTO gets to keep the money. But if it turns out that it's really something novel, the money's refunded.
          • So, you're going to write your Congresscritter and ask them to allocate a bigger budget to the USPTO? Perhaps ask them to

            Valid points all. So, are you arguing for the status quo? Did you have a better idea?

            Or are you just picking holes?

            • No, I'd rather see patents go to a system where the inventor has to produce a working tangible model (at a minimum). Allowing patents of business processes, user interfaces, etc. just destroys the whole idea of inventors having exclusive right to their discoveries.

              I'd also return copyright to the old 26 year copyright with the *author* being able to register a second 26 year copyright period. (Screw international treaties. ;-)) If someone can't make money on something in 52 years then it most likely isn
        • "Get more people on board and raise the application fees."

          It's even easier than that. Just start actually enforcing the rules and reject 99% of the applications instead.

          I'll bet the application rate drops until only those applications with some merit are submitted.

          With the current situation it's simply more profitable to file 25 junk patent applications, get a third of them approved and start suing than it is to research something worthwhile.
        • What they should do is start en masse denying patents. That should chill the application rate.

        • Well, tough shit. Get more people on board and raise the application fees. The number of rejected patents due to proof of prior art will make defensive patents disappear.

          Yea, raise patent application fees so an individual can't afford to get a patent. Leave it to big business to get all patents.

          Falcon

      • Re:What goes around comes around (Score:5, Insightful)

        by XxtraLarGe ( 551297 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @01:14PM (#13465295) Journal
        Everybody's sue-happy, but what's at issue here isn't Apple's karma coming back to haunt them. It's the fact that the idiots at the Patent Office are giving out patents for obvious and/or non-useful non-innovations that are breeding a chilling environment that's stifling innovation, which is purportedly exactly the opposite of the purpose of patents.

      • Re:What goes around comes around (Score:4, Insightful)

        by DurendalMac ( 736637 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @03:26PM (#13466305)
        You are an imbecile. Apple wasn't suing for patent infringement for some lameass patent on any of these cases. Futurepower and eMachines both created direct iMac knockoffs. Hell, Futurepower's was so close that you could almost consider it an iMac, although they gave utterly stupid excuses like "We use gemstones to name the colors instead of fruit! Floppy drive! Multibutton mouse!" The iMac had become a symbol and trademark for Apple, and the lazy assholes at both companies ripped it off so blatantly as to infringe on it. Both were sued and both of them lost. Serves them right. Apple sues leaks because of NDA violations, which, the last time I checked, was a perfectly legit reason. They went after Thinksecret because they knowingly posted NDA-violated material. The domain name is silly, though. I'll grant you that. The Sorenson suit was due to Sorenson trying to duck under the radar, and Apple caught them. It'd be nice to see the Sorenson Video 3 codec get around more, though. In any case, none of these suits are as retarded as this one from Creative. This is Creative being unable to offer a competitor for the iPod, so they're going to try and sue it away with an utterly fucking retarded software patent that was so broad it could cover almost any GUI. Pull your head from your ass.
    • Really people, read the whole post.
    • You can pull all of the patent information from the last time we discussed this issue but the fact still remains that a patent application date does not establish when an idea was first formulated. The Patent Office can only issue based on what is available, so it will be up to Apple to prove, if it can, that its interface was documented and notarized before Creative.

      Even that shouldn't matter. Unless I'm missunderstanding what the USPTO says, a patent application isn't published until 18 months after it
    • "The Patent Office can only issue based on what is available, so it will be up to Apple to prove, if it can, that its interface was documented and notarized before Creative."

      Why the hell does everybody assume Apple had the idea first, especially when Creative was in the market long before Apple.

      And yes I agree it's a stupid patent, so it should be struck down.
    • How about we just start boycotting companies that use this strategy? I, for one, will never buy a Creative product again. If more people would be loyal to honest companies, and refuse to do business with companies that try to pull off this crap, they would have no choice but to choose another method, like maybe, being "Creative". Patent reform is needed too, but the purchasing power of the public is still powerful. Combine the two, and problem solved.
    • Regardless of prior art and other nonsense involved in why this patent was granted... the thing that really bugs me about this is that Creative has long since stopped innovating - this is the third time in recent history that they have levied a large patent media mess. A3D, id and some 3D code, and now an interface? The madness has to stop. The other two I can actually fathom their point of view on it, but this latest is simply money grubbing from a large corporation and certainly is an abuse of our legal s

  • Prior Art? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Friday September 02, 2005 @12:26PM (#13464864)

    Yet another demonstration of how the patent system is irretrievably broken.

    Seriously, it shouldn't even be possible to patent a hierarchical menu system...prior art abounds. This reminds me of the amusing, although almost certainly apocryphal, story of the man who attempted to patent the wheelbarrow. Like the man in the story, Creative ought to be thrown out of court, preferably onto some tender portion of their collective corporate anatomy.

    • Seriously, it shouldn't even be possible to patent a hierarchical menu system...prior art abounds. This reminds me of the amusing, although almost certainly apocryphal, story of the man who attempted to patent the wheelbarrow. Like the man in the story, Creative ought to be thrown out of court, preferably onto some tender portion of their collective corporate anatomy.

      I couldn't agree with you more.

      Once people understood the paradigm of hierarchical folders, that became the way everybody tried to show inform

    • Seriously, it shouldn't even be possible to patent a hierarchical menu system...prior art abounds.

      That used to be true. Most patent examiners today lack significant technical expertise for the areas where they are granting patents.

      Sad but true.

    • Re:Prior Art? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tpgp ( 48001 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @12:41PM (#13464989) Homepage
      This reminds me of the amusing, although almost certainly apocryphal, story of the corporation who attempted to gain all intellectual property rights over the desktop metaphor for computer interfaces using copyright.

      Oh wait! Thats not an apocryphal story at all [wikipedia.org]

      Whilst I don't think software patents are a good idea generally and this particular patent is insane, I feel a certain....lack of sympathy toward apple for opening this entire can of worms in the first place.

      • Re:Prior Art? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rsborg ( 111459 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @01:21PM (#13465356) Homepage
        Whilst I don't think software patents are a good idea generally and this particular patent is insane, I feel a certain....lack of sympathy toward apple for opening this entire can of worms in the first place.

        Stop feeling any amount of sympathy for Apple, as in the end it will be the customers who lose when Apple and Creative sign cross-liscencing deals/etc.

        It's not Apple who loses here, it's the customer, every time one of these bogus over-reaching patents gets brought up and cross-lisenced to raise the barrier to entry and exclude players who aren't already in the game.

    • The funny thing is (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Friday September 02, 2005 @12:42PM (#13464994) Homepage
      When I try to think of prior examples of people implementing the Creative patent as I understand it, the absolute first thing that comes to mind is... that little file browser thingy from NeXT [pair.com]. Which was later assimilated into OS X when NeXT was bought by... Apple. Can you tell the difference between this and the cascading menus in the iPod? Because I can't.

      And of course I'm still trying to figure out whether NeXT themselves ripped off the browser from that class browser [ucsb.edu] widget you see so often in Smalltalk, or if it went the other way around.

      Oh, but of course, the NeXT example covers a browser for files and the Smalltalk example covers a browser for objects, and in the mad calculus of patent law this is totally different from a browser for music files...
      • You know, it's funny, but in some ways the patent office has gotten better over the years.

        I heard that Smucker's tried to patent Uncrustables a while back (process patent?). For those of you who don't know, Uncrustables are fillings (PB & J, Cheese) that are wrapped in a neat doughy pod thing.

        Anyway, the patent office refused to grant the patent, because they said that Uncrustables were basically big ravioli.

        That's about what the PO should have done here. The Creative interface is basically a Smalltalk

      • Re:The funny thing is (Score:3, Informative)

        by shark72 ( 702619 )

        "Oh, but of course, the NeXT example covers a browser for files and the Smalltalk example covers a browser for objects, and in the mad calculus of patent law this is totally different from a browser for music files."

        Precisely. You have pointed out what all the "prior art! prior art! Bok bok bok!" screamers have missed: it's the platform that counts here. Even an app that plays MP3 files on the PC likely wouldn't count; the "my PC is just a big fancy MP3 player!" argument likely won't cut it. The leg

    • Re:Prior Art? (Score:3, Informative)

      by PhilHibbs ( 4537 )
      It isn't a patent on hierarchical menus, it's a patent on "automatic hierarchical categorization of music by metadata." [uspto.gov]

      • Re:Prior Art? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by shotfeel ( 235240 )
        I've been trying to figure out how long iTunes has been doing this. Does anyone remember if the first versions (on OS 9) did this? How about the jukebox apps that predated iTunes on Mac and Windows?
    • Not sure if it's the same story but an Australian man certainly did manage to patent the wheel. He did it to show that the patent system there is in need of reform.
    • a system for stating opinions on Slashdot about how the patent system is currently broken whenever another ridiculous patent gets granted/and/or disputed, and it happens to appear on Slashdot. My system of posting such opinions assumes that there will be an obvious positive response to such "The patent system is broken" posts, granting them a +5 Insightful.

      I'm gonna get rich! :D

    • Re:Prior Art? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by aristotle-dude ( 626586 )
      The NeXT file browser is a perfect exactly of prior art. It looks visually similar to the iPod menu complete with arrows and a shifting of the display as you navigate further down the tree.

      The iPod GUI could be described as a single pane Miller columns browser. Even iTunes uses a similar interface.

  • Remember when Patents were to create? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @12:27PM (#13464868) Homepage Journal
    I do. But now they seem to be used to fight legal wars and stop technological and engineering advances, instead of promoting them.

    Sigh.

    Maybe I should file a patent for delivering virus programs with a USB or other plug-in computer device ... then Creative would owe me money ...

  • In the word of the Black Eyed Peas... (Score:4, Funny)

    by LegendOfLink ( 574790 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @12:27PM (#13464869) Homepage
    Let's get retarded.
  • Well we never saw THAT coming :p.

  • Evil Plan (Score:5, Funny)

    by kaellinn18 ( 707759 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @12:28PM (#13464885) Homepage Journal
    I have a patent pending regarding complaining about idiotic patents online. When this baby passes, you're all going to be screwed! Muahahaha.

  • Bad Patent... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RUFFyamahaRYDER ( 887557 ) <<moc.niamodslek> <ta> <todhsals>> on Friday September 02, 2005 @12:28PM (#13464886) Homepage
    "which allows users to select a song, album or track by navigating a succession of menus."

    How the hell did they actually patent that? It makes me sick... What other ways are you going to navigate your music library if not by artist, album, or genre?! There's not too many ways to impliment this.

    • Re:Bad Patent... (Score:5, Funny)

      by mopslik ( 688435 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @12:35PM (#13464936)

      What other ways are you going to navigate your music library if not by artist, album, or genre?

      I organize my music collection based on the number of vowels in the second word of the group's name. If there is only one word, I take the total number of letters in the word (n) and add a number produced by the formula floor((n mod 3)/(n+1))+1. If the group's name is composed entirely of numbers, simple addition of each digit is performed -- if the result is 2 or more digits, the process is repeated until it's down to 1. Prince has his own unique category.

      Really, I thought everyone did it this way.

  • For Future Reference (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Friday September 02, 2005 @12:29PM (#13464898) Homepage Journal
    From the original BBC news article [bbc.co.uk]
    In November, Creative boss Sim Wong Hoo said he aimed to
    out market his competitors, saying the MP3 war had started.
    From the NYT
    Creative Technology, which is based in Singapore and has United States operations in Milpitas, Calif., said it would consider every option available to defend the patent, including possible legal action.
    So the translation of "out market" in the particular Singapore dialect of English could be extended to "suing the pants off of" in American English.

    Considering Apple holds the lion's share of the MP3 player market, though a late comer, it's not surprising to see the legal threat, but perhaps Creative Technologies should be looking at their own failure to capitalise on the market which left the door open for Apple.

    Patent 6,928,433 [uspto.gov]

  • Innovation (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ckliv ( 847611 )
    Maybe someone can explain to me, how it's possible to patent even such an elementary idea?
    • Because of the lack of knowledge (or ability?) of the patent examiners at the US Patent Office, it seems like very little research into prior art or the actual originality of the ideas present in a patent application are rarely investigated in detail (or apparently at all in some cases, like this one).

      It seems the USPTO is to patents what FEMA is to hurricane relief. :-( :-(
  • OooO... I've got a solution. I better patent it so I can sell it to Apple.

    No more vulgar scrolling through artist and album names. I call my invention the iHum interface. Get in touch with me Steve, I'm sure we can work out reasonable royalties.

  • Irony (Score:2, Funny)

    by Attrition_cp ( 888039 )
    Anyone else see the Irony in "Creative Technology" and this patent?

  • good patents? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by cerelib ( 903469 )
    Just a question. This patent seems completely stupid, but are there valid examples of patented technologies that anybody can provide, or does everyone here hate patents in total?
    • Definitely not everyone here hates patents in general. Many people here very much agree with patents on things besides software. An example that is sometimes mentioned is patents in medicine. It takes years of research to come up with a new medicine, then a lot of testing, etc. etc. before you even have a marketable product. Patents grant you a monopoly for a limited time, in exchange for publishing your findings. This allows you to earn some money off of your research, and the world gets to benefit from yo

  • Nonsense (Score:3, Funny)

    by Darth Daver ( 193621 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @12:43PM (#13465007)
    So they have patented "navigating a succession of menus". No prior art there. I think the Zen patent should be for including a virus on an MP3 player.

    Companies like this make me sick. I wouldn't accept a Creative MP3 player as a gift because they suck in comparison to Apple's offerings. If they sue Apple, I will never buy another Creative product again, and I do currently own a few of their sound cards and even an olde display adapter. Notice the "e" in olde. That's how old it is.

  • If this is a battle of lawyers (Score:5, Funny)

    by noewun ( 591275 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @12:45PM (#13465028) Journal
    Then Creative should give up, now, while there's still something left. I know for a fact that Steve keeps his litigators locked in a barren back room and only feeds them every third day. Makes 'em mean. . .

  • The old GUI look-and-feel lawsuit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fred fleenblat ( 463628 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @12:50PM (#13465068) Homepage
    It seems like it was yesterday, or maybe 20 years ago, but I seem to recall that Apple tried to sue microsoft for stealing several aspects of its GUI, like the trash can, folders, and the assignment of operations to specific menus like File and Edit.

    Apple lost that lawsuit when the Judge held that GUIs and their look and feel could not be patented or copyrighted, so it seems like that could be used as a precedent in their favor on this lawsuit.
    • As it happened, the court's approach seemed to invalidate the copyrighting of a broad "look and feel" of a piece of software, though this was not decisively stated in the court's ruling. The fact that Apple and Microsoft had entered into the licensing agreement for Windows 1.0 made a large part of the case a mere contractual matter rather than a matter of copyright law -- much against Apple's preference -- so it was not necessary for the court to set a precedent in its ruling. It remains unclear what would
  • I've patented this system, you rollup soft paper on a cardboard cylinder thereby allowing its convenient dispensing when user has the need to clean up after defacating.

    Yes, I think I will patent toilet paper.

    Now /. users and the rest of humanity has to pay me to wipe their rear ends.

    -M
  • writer of "Hello Mudduh, Hello Faddah." The apocryphal story is that after being sued for one of his songs being similar (structure? tune?) to a copyrighted work, he copyrighted a work consisting of the b-flat note.

    If Apple bought that copyright, Creative wouldn't have much that could be played using their patent.

    Or maybe they could buy the rights to John Cage's 4'33", and sue anyone who produced an MP3 player which was silent when not playing MP3s.

  • Does this mean they patented the file system. You know, folders inside of folders and then the files. Like every OS's file system is, but for the potable device. Because that is basically what it is, a file that is in a folder, that is in a folder till you get to the root directory. Could they use any file system as prior art.
  • I think I speak for everybody with at least half a brain when I say software patents must be eliminated.

  • Patent proxy wars (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pieterh ( 196118 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @01:01PM (#13465176) Homepage
    When a sliding company makes a bold and aggressive attack on the market leader, don't look for a direct link between that company and the attack.

    Instead, look to other companies who would benefit most from such an attack.

    Creative do many things, and attacking Apple in the player market is a very high risk gamble. If they lose they will basically have destroyed their player business - no-one is going to buy a product from a bunch of losers. If they win, they will still have a problem - people like Apply and attacking them like this just looks evil.

    Cui bono? Who benefits?

    Someone rich, who wants to take over the player market, and has a history of launching proxy wars to harass and intimidate its competitors, on feeble or completely false pretexts.

    Someone who has been fighting hard to get software patents enabled in Europe, through proxy groups such as the BSA and C4C.

    This opinion is simply a gut feeling. Are there any recent reports of deals between Microsoft and Creative Labs that indicate money flowing?

    • Re:Patent proxy wars (Score:3, Insightful)

      by matt4077 ( 581118 )
      . If they lose they will basically have destroyed their player business - no-one is going to buy a product from a bunch of losers.

      A rather ridiculous conspiracy theory. What consumer will ever even hear about this lawsuit? What consumer will care? You know how many lawsuits any large company has going on at any given time? It's probably in the hundreds, and they are bound to lose some of those. Nobody cares.

      But who has a stake in this you ask. Creative, of course. They see themselves as a leading company i

    • Re:Patent proxy wars (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Tim C ( 15259 )
      If they lose they will basically have destroyed their player business - no-one is going to buy a product from a bunch of losers.

      Most people won't even know of the suit, or will very quickly forget if they do hear of it.

      If they win, they will still have a problem - people like Apply and attacking them like this just looks evil.

      Again, I think you over-estimate things here. Most people don't give two hoots about Apple, or Microsoft, or anything like that. They want a computer to do stuff with, and don't partic

  • Obviousness? (Score:3, Informative)

    by PenguiN42 ( 86863 ) <taylork@alum.mit . e du> on Friday September 02, 2005 @01:08PM (#13465229) Journal
    It seems to me that Apple shouldn't even need to prove prior art to kill this patent where it stands -- the defense that the invention is obvious, and therefore unpatentable, should be all they need.

    Are there any lawyers in the audience who know exactly how the "obviousness" requirement is treated in courts of law these days?

    • Re:Obviousness? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Macadamizer ( 194404 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @01:59PM (#13465654)
      It seems to me that Apple shouldn't even need to prove prior art to kill this patent where it stands -- the defense that the invention is obvious, and therefore unpatentable, should be all they need.

      To prove "obviousness," you need to show that the invention would have been "obvious" to one with "ordinary skill in the art" at the time of the application of the patent -- in this case, back in 2001. Of course, the way you show that is by showing what a person of "ordinary skill in the art" would have known in 2001, and you do that by digging up experts who can testify as to the ordinary skill in the art, and by digging up textbooks and articles and papers and everything else. In essence, you need the "prior art" to prove "obviousness," so you can't separate out the two like you suggest.

      Legal obviousness is a pain in the ass to prove, because it's so fuzzy -- it's much easier to find a patent invalid based on prior art, if the prior art exists. Another thing to remember is that even if art appears to be prior art, if the applicant or the examiner referred to the art during prosecution, yet still issued the patent, then it is presumed that such art may not qualify as invalidating prior art under 35 USC 102. So even if you find something that looks like prior art, you need to go to that patent itself and the patent's prosecution history to figure out if the art was relied on in prosecution, and is therefore essentially (although there are exceptions) useless to prove invalidity.

      When you are attacking a patent, you pull out all of the stops -- you attack on noninfringement (trying to show that you are not infringing, even if the patent is valid), invalidity (that the patent is invalid and never should have been issued, either because of prior art or obviousness), unenforceability (saying that even if the patent is valid, it's not enforceable, for any number of reasons), and, if you have any reason at all to believe that it might be true, inequitable conduct (basically accusing the inventor or his lawyers of lying to the USPTO to get the patent issued).

  • Unconstitutional (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @01:22PM (#13465362) Homepage Journal
    The Constitution directs Congress to establish patents and copyrights to promote progress in the useful arts and sciences. We recognize that protecting investment in invention is necessary, because the freedom to copy someone's invention without other investment prohibits inventions being worth producing by people without the other protections of big organizations. Which big organizations aren't often enough the source of inventions necessary to keep our society coping with changes in the world, let alone lead in the invention work. And even when they are the source (as they often are), they can't always produce their invention when a tiny part is restricted by some other patent holder, who can demand any compensation for a license from their monopoly.

    But we don't need the current system. When an inventor of a device has to consider that someone might have a patent on a hierarchical menu used innovatively on their own device, they won't be able to produce the actually innovative part. Or even just marginally improve the invention, incrementally keeping up with a changing world. The current patent system is a major impediment to progress in the useful arts and sciences. It is unconstutional, and must be replaced with something that actually works.

  • "Apple declined to comment on the patent." (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bogie ( 31020 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @01:24PM (#13465376) Journal
    What Apple is really thinking.

    "dam, why didn't we patent that first?"

    Apple just as bad as the rest. You reap what you sow I guess. Too bad its not just Apple and Creative but every fucking company in the world paticipating in an "arms" race with regard to patents.

    Think some day it will get so bad that they will HAVE to reform our system? Don't make me laugh. And always the consumers will be the ones picking up the tabs for the "cost of doing business".

  • Creative is doing it wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Barlo_Mung_42 ( 411228 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @03:33PM (#13466357) Homepage
    They should have started with a small company like Neuros that couldn't efford to defend them selves. With a precedent setting case under their belt they would stand a better chance against Apple.

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