Creative are quite possibly angling to get bought out here.

I know it's not about the patent, but what happened? I thought Creative was sort of a giant in the industry; not perhaps in MP3 players, but in soundcards and the like. How'd the drop in sales occur? Sales of PC's aren't slowing down significantly, at least there haven't been any stories about it on TR or Ars.

The patent summary doesn't really explain WHAT is patented. There is exactly one independent claim in this filing -- Claim 1 -- and any successful infringement claim must derive from it. The key phrase 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...." etc.

Unlike what a lot of people appear to think, Creative isn't claiming the hierarchical graphical search of a database as the key invention; they are claiming the application of this to a portable media player. If there is no prior art of that particular application, then it is novel; "non-obvious" is a little more questionable but pretty hard to counter. In areas of high-tech, if someone hasn't done it before, that may be enough to uphold the patent on "non-obvious" grounds. "Whether this kind of patent should even exist" is a separate issue; at present, it does, and Creative is holding one such right now.

Apple's better strategy would be to comb through their own IP portfolio, find every possible way it can be applied against Creative's product lines, and blitz with a huge lawsuit package of their own. That ends one of two ways: either one party finally goes bankrupt (which, based on present financials, would be Creative), or an out-of-court settlement is reached, probably involving extensive cross-licensing.

IIRC that's basically what HP did a few years ago when SGI came after them. In that case, HP still ended up shelling out a couple hundred million, but their original liabilities would have been more in the billion-dollar range, and that's about what SGI got out of the less-fortunate Intel in that same round of court action.

Creative can go suck a cock. I want my Aureal back!

I hope that Apple retaliates by suing Creative into the stone age!

Why didn't I become a lawyer in this day and age?

Oh yeah, because I like to sleep at night, albeit not on a pile of money.

oh boy, I love m Zen micro but creative is going a bit too far. they need to think for a bit...If they want to get back in the game they need to
-Fix driver issues
-Stop selling bad X-fi cards
-improve compatability
-lower prices

If they think they can come back this way...There is no hope for em. This is going to hurt Creative. I'm going to miss being able to buy a Creative MP3/Video player.

Creative should clearly lose this. On the other hand, it's not like Apple is exactly pure on this front either. When the Mac was losing marketshare back in the early 90s, Apple's approach was to sue MS for copying the "look and feel" of the Mac with Windows. Apple would clearly have been a lot better off spending their time developing a coherent operating strategy back then rather than chasing after MS in court.

Generally speaking, companies that try to litigate rather than innovate are doomed. So I hope this is the end of Creative, but I can't say that I exactly feel sorry for Apple.

The are essentially trying to claim patent on a database search/front end.

Good luck with that.

Ah, they are pulling the old "we're lame at what we are doing so we sue others who have money with a lame-ass patent given to us by the Lhamas at the US patent office".

Hope they win. Apple has to stop copying other people's work and call it innovation.

These suits against very public companies can only bring about eventual patent reform. while it seems obvious patent reform should have happened a decade or so ago when software patents came to fruition, there you go.

The whole thing regarding "patenting ideas/software" seems silly. Patent things, physical objects.

Didn't Creative sue id Software for using graphics algorithms to program audio? So can't they also claim that ANY use of heirarchical sorting is covered under their patent whether on a portable music player or, say, an address book with your friends' names alphebatized in it?

I keep thinking about this, and I can't understand how one can patent a method of sorting by category. Hasn't this process been used since time immemorial? The only difference is that Creative patented it on a portable music player, but shouldn't it then be possible to patent something that allows you to categorize things in, say, a pocket sized address book?

Sad patentent. I have a feeling the patent will be reversed when they come out of this, and then what will Creative have? Richer lawyers, poorer workers. What else is new.

-LS

I some times like Creative for playing kid games

Talk about another BS Patent, brought to you thanks to another episode of the usual patent office incompetence.

Rediculous is not the word here. Greed is. Also mismanagement applies, in fact, every word after mismanagement applies.

So very sad. Financial whoes? Oh ok, let's sue somebody. And in what kind of way? After reading the summary I thought Creative had patented 'digital sorting by alphabet'. Morons.

First they patent a publically known method and sue id Software, now they patent a pubically known method and sue Apple. Did I miss anything here?

Creative's trouble is that they stifle competition so much that they stagnate an industry, like sound cards, and marginalize its importance to PC owners. Then PC owners don't buy their cards. A 32% drop in sales is significant. Creative is beginning to reap what it has sown these last few years.

As far as I am concerned, the meta-data tags that are included with MP3 files and other music types were put there for exactly this type of use.

From other discussions:
1) The in-car EMPEG MP3 player from 1998 had a similar system.
2) The column-style interface was used by Xerox in the 70's, Apple in the 80s (on the Lisa), NeXT in the 90s, and Apple again in Mac OS X.
3) Anyone who's done their first music database does exactly this type of searching

and there was more than just that.

The concept is obvious, there's prior art a-plenty, and the damn patent shows a tree-view Win-95 style, not an iPod-like interface anyway.

This is getting redicilous, these kind of patents are absurd. Just read the summary... Come on?!?

Creative is really gonna look bad on this one. It appears that they are sueing to get much needed cash........