Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Creative Lawsuit Update: Apple Sues Creative

The countersuit should force some sort of cross-licensing settlement -- seeing as neither company wants a large segment of its business effectively shut down.
 
I hope this doesn't put Creative out of business. While I don't really like them, I think competition in the MP3 player market is a good thing for us as consumers.
 
I expect that this will end with Apple and Creative both saying "We won't sue you, if you don't sue us". I hope this is just a strategy to get Creative's claim dropped and that they can both stop wasting money on lawyers.
 
m-dogg said:
I hope this doesn't put Creative out of business. While I don't really like them, I think competition in the MP3 player market is a good thing for us as consumers.
Click to expand...
very good point. but i still want to see them suffer. :D
 
This is the way the game is played in corporate America. Everybody files for as many patents as possible. The big boys don't sue each other, because they're all using tech that the others have patented. If they were all to file lawsuits, it would end up with no money changing hands, because they'd all be paying the same amounts to each other for all the license fees - with the lawyers taking all the corporate profits. So they don't sue.

Creative is not a big boy. They don't realize how this game is played. They have one patent that might be useful against the iPod, so they threaten a suit. Apple responded by suing over four Apple patents that Creative is violating. At this point, either Creative will settle, or both suits will go to court and Creative will end up paying net royalties to Apple for every Zen sold.

It only remains to see how stupid Creative really is.
 
The regurgitation of this story is getting old. How about reporting what Apple is suing for or just not reporting anything at all?

This is just pure laziness. Move along.
 
Litigation

Hey - I want to sue somebody. It's the thing to do these days. Any suggestions?

Really, it's clever of Apple. Troll the trolls. Would be nice to see the basis of the suit.
 
m-dogg said:
I hope this doesn't put Creative out of business. While I don't really like them, I think competition in the MP3 player market is a good thing for us as consumers.
Click to expand...

Although creative seems to be the 2nd largest player the MP3 market is too saturated ... I would actually like to see the opposite and few big players bow out of the market gracefully ... none of them are innovating ... only copying Apple.
 
Well the main problem is that the patent office even issued a patent in the first place, giving Creative the notion that they actually could patent the obvious.

Apple bought SoundJam and it used the same navigation organization as the iPod. The idea that Creative can take an already existing idea that Apple owned and then get a new patent by saying 'we want to use Apple's already existing music player organization scheme for a nearly identical usage, i.e. a small computer dedicated to being a music player' is obviously wrong and it should never have been issued at all.

Maybe getting the lawyers out of the patent offices would be a good way to go - they are motivated by self-interest to make law more litigious, not less.
 
Okay, so now it's time for IBM to sue Apple for stealing their litigation strategy.
 
shamino said:
Creative is not a big boy. They don't realize how this game is played. They have one patent that might be useful against the iPod, so they threaten a suit. Apple responded by suing over four Apple patents that Creative is violating. At this point, either Creative will settle, or both suits will go to court and Creative will end up paying net royalties to Apple for every Zen sold.

It only remains to see how stupid Creative really is.
Click to expand...
Well Apple sells 4 ipods for every zen sold (at least). So even if Creative pays Apple for royalties on its Zen, Creative could potentially come out on top if they get a piece of every ipod sold. Creative may even be able to stop their mp3 business altogether and just live off the royalties.

This is all hypothetical, of course.
 
whos copyin who?

ZEN Vision:M

prod14331_hdr_1_6_1.jpg


iPod Photo
ipod_photo.jpg




ZEN Touch

prod10274_hdr_1_6_1.jpg


iPod (1st gen)

ipod.jpg
 
Hostile Take-over

Apple bought SoundJam and it used the same navigation organization as the iPod.
Click to expand...

Why even bother with suing Creative. According to Google:

http://www.google.com/finance?q=CREAF

Creative only has a market cap of Mkt Cap: 478.15M

I think I read somewhere that Apple is expected to net over $19B over the next 5 years from iTMS and iPod. Apple should just buy out Creative like they did with SoundJam. They would then own the patents for the bargain basement price of $500M. That's a 2.5% investment without all the lawsuits. I don't get why Apple doesn't make more acquisitions like this. They are cash heavy and making record profits.
 
NewSc2 said:
so what exactly is Apple claiming Creative is infringing upon?
Click to expand...

Market share. Apple has a patent on low market share. Due to Creative's low market share in mp3 players it has forced Apple to be ridiculously successful, drawing out idiot companies to sue them.

Let's get a loser pay legal system and all will be solved.
 
Shangri-La said:
Why even bother with suing Creative. According to Google:

http://www.google.com/finance?q=CREAF

Creative only has a market cap of Mkt Cap: 478.15M

I think I read somewhere that Apple is expected to net over $19B over the next 5 years from iTMS and iPod. Apple should just buy out Creative like they did with SoundJam. They would then own the patents for the bargain basement price of $500M. That's a 2.5% investment without all the lawsuits. I don't get why Apple doesn't make more acquisitions like this. They are cash heavy and making record profits.
Click to expand...


they could buy them, but then what? what is apple going to do with creative? i guess they could get some nice sound cards...but other than that...
 
Because Creative has NOTHING of value to Apple. No hardware, no software. It'd be like Apple throwing away 500mil. I wonder how many other companies would make similar claims? WTF

Shangri-La said:
Why even bother with suing Creative. According to Google:

http://www.google.com/finance?q=CREAF

Creative only has a market cap of Mkt Cap: 478.15M

I think I read somewhere that Apple is expected to net over $19B over the next 5 years from iTMS and iPod. Apple should just buy out Creative like they did with SoundJam. They would then own the patents for the bargain basement price of $500M. That's a 2.5% investment without all the lawsuits. I don't get why Apple doesn't make more acquisitions like this. They are cash heavy and making record profits.
Click to expand...
 
balamw said:
LOL. So that's the Steve's secret weapon, he's patented the elements!

I really do want to know if the four are better defined than the weak "Zen" patent.

B
Click to expand...

I'm still trying to work out how Creative patented Zen. I thought the Buddhists had the prior art on that one a long time ago. Does an empty iPod still make a sound?
 
from msnbc.com

"Apple alleged Creative infringed four patents for user-interface systems on the digital music players. The suit was filed in response to a similar allegation against Apple by Creative, which is seeking damages and the suspension of sales of the Apple iPod in the US."

heh.
 
You can just put aiffs on your ipod. That would sound pretty damn good!

(L) said:
Let me make this clear. The Zen is an overall crappier deal, period. Sounds better? Here's the problem...

Creative is a sound card company. The Zen is a media player. If you use WAV, the Zen will sound better. If you want quality almost as high but want to be able to fit more than 10 albums on a media player, you need a bit rate high enoug to sound good and compressed enough to be compact - WM VBR or Apple Lossless would do well. Correct me if I'm wrong, but for people like me (i.e., people that want lots of quality music), the iPod is the way to go if only because it supports Apple Lossless.

As for what the consumers want, that's not to be settled in courts anyway. As for Creative Labs's suit, their UI design is not original. Neither is Apple's, really. It's easy to use because it is simple, but in the end, it's been done before, and if people can sue over this, they can sue over any menu system. Really, Apple and Creative look stupid together on this.

Bottom line: Which sounds better? The Zen unless you want good sound and lots of tracks. What's wrong with suing over simple UI's? There's a difference between software innovation and being able to organize stuff in hierarchical groups.
Click to expand...
 
why am i sure i remember creative saying when they were awarded the "zen" patent, that they wouldn't sue anyone for using what it covers?

and i'm sure i saw that on MR...

but anyway, i think it's quite funny. Apple should just buy Creative and have done with it. and they'd then control the PC soundcard market :rolleyes:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back