Creative Lawsuit Update: Apple Sues Creative

[Counterfit]

Whether or not Creative have a valid patent they will lose, they could have trademarked the name iPod and they still wouldn't win. When it comes to America not even the Supreme Court can argue with an 83% US Marketshare.

Market share has no importance on whether someone loses a patent infringement case. Some guy in a garage/basement/backyard could patent something (assuming he had enough $$$ to hire a patent lawyer), and Microsoft could (accidentally/intentionally) use the patented hardware/software without permission (thus infringing). MS would then be in a bad spot to lose a patent infringement case, even though they would probably have 99.99999% of the market of whatever used the patented stuff. Of course, they'd probably settle or simply buy the patent from him if that happened.

 

[Leondunkleyc]

.

 

[mannix87]

anyone have any stats on whether Singaporeans prefer the iPod over their own Zen? my bet is, the iPod's outselling Creative even in Singapore.

 

[steve_hill4]

anyone have any stats on whether Singaporeans prefer the iPod over their own Zen? my bet is, the iPod's outselling Creative even in Singapore.

Excluding Japan, I think most of South-East Asia seem to be behind either Samsung, iRiver or 3rd parties, (depends on location). Apple are well known and sell probably more than any other single company in the region, but I seem to recall they own about 20-30% of the market there at best. Of course, those figures may include the much higher proportion of Japanese sales, so taking them out would drop it closer to the 20%.

It is suggested in part this is because there is only an iTMS in Japan and if there is no store, people seem to prefer to use their CDs and downloads, (legal or not for both), on another machine. This is true even if they are playing files that Apple support, not just WMA.

A lot of the figures are merely the work of my memory and guessing, so please don't shoot me if I am off the mark in any way. Apple does not like to release sales figures or market percentages for individual countries where they have a relatively low share.

 

[syntrophy]

anyone have any stats on whether Singaporeans prefer the iPod over their own Zen? my bet is, the iPod's outselling Creative even in Singapore.

yeah i do, the last time i read about it, creative was at 24%, ipod was at 30% and rising far faster than creatives are.

i prefer ipod! though some stupid fellow singaporeans buy creative "because they can play fm without buying other add-ons"

right....

 

[shamino]

What I implied was that, of the MILLIONS (!) of patents, Apple KNEW IN ADVANCE that Creative was infringing, otherwise how would they drop a countersuit on THE SAME DAY. You have to admit, generally if Apple was DOING NO WRONG, they would not stand for not even 1 patent infringement and 7 would be out of the question. It stands to reason that they knew that Creative might file some sort of patent complaint on Apple and had this ready just in case.

You obviously have no clue about how corporations work.

Big companies patent every two-bit idea their employees think up. Some are frivolous, some are solid, and most are in a questionable gray area in between. But they don't go on a lawsuit rampage against every pipsqueak company that infringes them - they'd end up spending trillions of dollars on nothing but lawyer fees and wouldn't improve their own product standings one bit.

Instead, they hold on to the patents as defense against those pipsqueak companies that are stupid enough to sue over the one patent they happen to hold.

Why on earth would you be so PRO-APPLE that you couldn't even consider that sometimes, ideas overlap and sometimes you have to just roll the dice. Apple's "SOSUMI" (So Sue Me) is a prime example of Apple saying "we're going to do what we want and if you have a beef, let's see you in court. This is business. Billions hang in the balance. Do you actually think that Apple is 100% above board, all of the time? If you do, you're naive.

And what makes you think that Creative is any cleaner? Because they're smaller?

I can guarantee you that the iPod's other competitors (Sony, Rio, Samsung, and all the rest) infringe on the same patents. And I'm sure Apple is infringing on their patents. But none of them are stupid enough to go suing each other.

But you have to ask WHY WOULD APPLE SIT ON 4 PATENT INFRINGEMENTS against Creative? It's because of this remote possiblity of patent 6,928,433.

For the same reason IBM doesn't sue everybody in the world over the millions of patents that they hold. It is impossible to develop any electronic product without infringing one one of them, but spending trillions of dollars to sue everybody is just plain stupid, and everybody knows it.

This is no different.

 

[shamino]

becuase not everyone files a patent whenever they take a dump. ...

There's always a long gap between patent filing dates and award dates. When you file, it usually gets rejected dozens of times on technicalities. So you fix the technicalities and re-file as many times as it takes until the patent is awarded.

This is on top of the buraucratic delays that happen in any government agency.

Finally, it is common practice to use this to delay the award date as much as possible. Patents are enforceable from the date of first filing, but they expire 17 years after the award date. So every extra year between first filing and award is another year you can sue for infringement (assuming you ultimately do get the patent.)

The telecom business has taken this to an art form. Most of the key pieces of tech for digital voice networks have patents that were filed in the 70's and 80's, and were only awarded a few years ago (in the 00's) - effectively adding 20-30 years to the period of protection! (Which may be a real problem for the industry, now that Alcatel has bought Lucent. Alcatel is far more eager to sue competitors than Lucent ever was, and Lucent inherited a lot of AT&T's core technology patents.)

 

[edoates]

They DO have something of questionable value. A patent. Of course that's now up to the courts to decide. You also assume that Apple is going to win the lawsuit. Maybe, maybe not. What do you think it will cost Apple if they lose? $100M, $200M, $500M? The courts know how much money Apple is raking in with the iPod. Don't you think that the fine will be proportionate? What is the cost to Apple if they are ordered to cease-and-desist?
.

Remember the Blackberry / NTP lawsuit? The pressure point is a possible injunction against selling ANY iPods while the suit progresses. Such injunctions are not automatic, but are routinely granted and appealed forever.

On seemingly ridiculous patents: if cunningly worded, you could probably patent multiplication. And Creative's patent may not be that cunning, just an overworked patent office, and the possibility of patenting interface elements, business methods, etc. At least Creative is NOT a patent troll (a term invented by someone I know!), but was actually using its patent in a product.

NTP had NO product, only a patent and used a possible injunction to bludgeon Blackberry into submission. I'm not an intellectual property attorney, so I can't speak to the validity of the NTP or Creative patents, but once granted, patents are notoriously difficult to over turn, and also once granted, the aforementioned injunction can be granted without regard to the validity of the underlying patent: once a patent is granted, it is assumed by the courts to be valid until it is "ungranted."

Reform of patent and copyright law is needed; write your congress people.

Ed"weird"

 

[edoates]

Ideally, there should be more support for some of those less common ones, even on mainstream players. I don't even know if FLAC is a compressed format. All I can say is that Apple Lossless is "good enough" for me. There are lots of factors to sound quality - in terms of hardware playing music, Creative might be slightly ahead of Apple. In terms of bit rate vs compression, Apple Lossless does an OK job. Then, of course, you need good headphones or speakers. Of course, from the vibe I'm getting, anybody who goes out of their way to use FLAC probably uses electrostatic headphones with an amp, or at least a decent Sennheiser pair. Or some good speakers. Truth be told though, I can't afford and I'm too lazy to bother with upgrading beyond Apple Lossless or my "standard" level Sennheiser cans.

When Apple Lossless is expanded, it is bit for bit identical to the original, as is FLAC, or Meridian Loss Packing (DVD-A format) for that matter. I've done enough tests to verify all three.

So, if FLAC sounds "Better" than Apple Lossless, it is likely to be the PLAYER, not the compression technology at fault. There are lots of things which make digital playback sound bad: jitter, poor analog components, etc.

Ed"weird"

 

[edoates]

I should have better articulated my point, but I was just trying to say that big never loses to small in a capitalistic world. In a perfect world theoretical guy in garage with $$$ for a patent lawyer would win the theoretical lawsuit, but this isn't a perfect world and when the judge is sitting in his chair with his gavel, coming to his decision, he will probably decide against creative becuase the really rich people know best.

But that's only my opinion of course

Big does lose from time to time, if small is right, and has patience: the guy who invented the "intermittent windshield wiper" beat Ford, GM, and Chrysler some years back; it took him (or is heir, I think) 15 years, but they won a few hundred million.

Ed"Weird"

 

[forrest1992]

Well if by some freak of nature chance, Apple loses all of theres and Creative wins, then to prevent stopping selling iPods in the US, Apple could then just buy Creative.

 

[balamw]

Patents are enforceable from the date of first filing, but they expire 17 years after the award date.

No and no.

Patents are only valid and can be enforced after they issue and their term is now 20 years from the filing date. Only patents filed before June 8, 1995 follow the old 17 year rules. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent_in_the_United_States

While the patent is pending the only "protection" offered is that no-one else should be able to come by and patent the same idea, but you don't get anything else until issuance.

I concur that submarine patents and other similar techqniques have been perfected by various industries to maximize the patentee's benefits from the patenting process.

B

 

[MacMan93]

Creative is just pissed that Apple is better then them. When I saw the pictures of the new color Zen I was extrememly pissed!!!! I have a 5thgen and it looks like an exact COPY. Creative needs to BURN! Why were they ever needed.....sound cards? Ha! The Mac had sound built in...ever since the 128KB!

News Flash Apple has filed another lawsuit agianst Creative. This lawsuit is stating Creative is using false advertisment. If Apple wins Creative will have to rename their company! (hint hint Creative...false advertisment)

Google Knows All......they can even tell the future....iPod is ganna' kick the Zens Azz!

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Zen&word2=iPod

 

[joeyboy76]

I agree completely, and yet again I see more uninformed crap being posted by mac yoda/yac moda.

Few even realised what mp3 players were until about the 3rd/4th generation iPods. If indeed Creative made the market for them, Apple made the
hypermarket. They didn't even produce theirs initially, but bought out the early Samsung produced model and marketed it as the Creative NOMAD.

A friend was playing music through his 15GB beast the other week and proudly stated it was one of the first, older than the iPod. When I slipped in the 5GB model first launching in 2001, he looked surprised and said that it must have been just after that then. Point, he had an early player but didn't even know when Apple first produced the iPod, thinking it to be a recent addition, (say 2-3 years). To say Creative had the market before anyone would ignore facts like people who bought mp3 players at the time of the iPod launch didn't even know what was in the market. Indeed most early players were mp3 CD players.

FACT: the nomad jukebox came before the iPod, using a 2" hard drive with USB1.1 connection. I remember seeing this in singapore as early as 1st half of 2001. the 5GB iPod only arrived sooner that year.

Creative did not create the first MP3 player, but they did create the first hard-drive based MP3 player.

 

[shamino]

Patents are only valid and can be enforced after they issue and their term is now 20 years from the filing date. Only patents filed before June 8, 1995 follow the old 17 year rules. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent_in_the_United_States

While the patent is pending the only "protection" offered is that no-one else should be able to come by and patent the same idea, but you don't get anything else until issuance.

Yes, but once the patent is issued, you can go back and retroactively sue everybody who was "infringing" during the pending period. As long as there is evidence of some kind of infringement after the issue date, lawyers can claim damages going back to day-1.

It happens all the time. The link you provided to submarine patents says the same thing.

I was unaware that the law was changed in in 1995 to eliminate much of this form of abuse. Which means we should hopefully be rid of this nonsense sometime in 2012, when all the <=1995 patents expire. But this still means we have another 6 years during which patent-squatters can abuse the system and make everybody else's lives miserable.

 

[Clive At Five]

And girls wonder...

Google Knows All......they can even tell the future....iPod is ganna' kick the Zens Azz!

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Zen&word2=iPod

That's a clever little tool there...

Try this:

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=girls&word2=iPod

And girls wonder why we "don't pay enough attention to them".... A man's gotta have his PRIORITIES!

-Clive

 

[ClimbingTheLog]

Creative did not create the first MP3 player, but they did create the first hard-drive based MP3 player.

No, that honor belongs to Remote Solutions and their Personal Jukebox:

http://www.antiqueradio.com/Dec04_Menta_mp3pt1.html
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/personaljuke.html

It was $800 in 1999.

I don't understand the "Creative was first with everything, iPod just marketed better attitude" from some folks here, and then just making up all kinds of things Creative didn't do first. Add some "as I remember" or "that I was aware of" if you don't have sources to back up your assertions.

If you do want to give Creative a first-to-market accolade, give them credit for making a dedicated MP3 player with a docking station. I belive they earned that title, even if it was just the same thing Palm and Compaq were already doing.

 

[/SG\]

Creative is just pissed that Apple is better then them. When I saw the pictures of the new color Zen I was extrememly pissed!!!! I have a 5thgen and it looks like an exact COPY. Creative needs to BURN! Why were they ever needed.....sound cards? Ha! The Mac had sound built in...ever since the 128KB!

News Flash Apple has filed another lawsuit agianst Creative. This lawsuit is stating Creative is using false advertisment. If Apple wins Creative will have to rename their company! (hint hint Creative...false advertisment)

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=Zen&word2=iPod

The lawsuit just goes to show you should never take anything forgranted. The Vision:M does not look like an exact copy. If you see it in person, it looks much better than the generic Apple mp3 player. Creative's interface is also much better than the ripped-off one.

I don't know what the outcome of the lawsuits will be, but I do hope that Creative will be able to continue making its fine Zen models. In the end, it may be the mp3 player itself that falls to a new trend.

 

[AsGard]

Relativity and stupidity of it all...

Hi,

I've been looking for the history of the MP3 player since (mostly) everybody is missing the big picture here. Take a look at History1 & History 2

So since 1998 there's been MP3 players, one more succesfull than the other offcourse. Yes is were at that time not only expensive devices but prone to errors and flaws, hell every new technology been released has its issues no?!

With the dawn of this baby ;Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox (2000); it started for me. Late that year I've bought me one of these with a 10GB HD in it; the SW delivered was pretty basic but it got your MP3 on the thing! (with tweaking it also stored jpegs or other data )
Never had any complaints; heck it was still groundbreaking HW.. you knew things were bound to evolved - Duh!
In the marging: remember the best price/quality ratio of the Creative Video- and Audiocards and how many there were sold between 1995 and 2000?...

So and there came a new player on the market anno 2001; IPod.
Since there were allready some players on the new MP3-player market killing eachother to get there devices sold to the public and Creative was a bit leading (at least here in Europe) but losing ground Apple/Mac took there iTunes project to the next level. So to make the story short; they "borrowed" others there efforts and began a marketing strategy leading to today's market dominance. It was clever of them, no doubt about but regrettable in my opinion because this was the thing I only would see from that other guy (Bill Gates) and his all-eating imperium.

So the bottom-line: Ipod HAS good players but the success is that they became a hype, not more than that. They are NOT better than any other player on the market. Yes there are worse available but Creative is not even close to being less good than IPod. More, I'm not only claim this but I now from experience there equaly or some models even better than IPod's!
It starts with the sound quality; creative has more experience with it and is still the best deal on the market for portable and PC-sound!

The real issue should be: why does hype and/or marketing defines what's better or "cooler"?! Why do you actually by something; because YOU like it or because "everybody" has one?!!
Call me old-fashioned or whatever but I like to critisize and make up my own choises not determined by others but supported and feeded.
Let everybody be free to chose what he wants in this and NO to monopolies, YES to intercompatibility; that should be the goal and interest of every company. This doesn't mean that there shouldn't be competion, only other kind of surving only the customer first, than the company!!

Creative till I die (or untill proven otherly) and respect for any others.

 

[matticus008]

So and there came a new player on the market anno 2001; IPod.
Since there were allready some players on the new MP3-player market killing eachother to get there devices sold to the public and Creative was a bit leading (at least here in Europe) but losing ground Apple/Mac took there iTunes project to the next level. So to make the story short; they "borrowed" others there efforts and began a marketing strategy leading to today's market dominance. It was clever of them, no doubt about but regrettable in my opinion because this was the thing I only would see from that other guy (Bill Gates) and his all-eating imperium.

True story, but not what the suit is about. What happened is that Creative had its Nomads out in the beginning with a clunky interface. It sorted songs by metadata--genre, album, track number, etc. that weren't part of the filename. The iPod came out, with its simple wheel and intuitive menus (Creative's players at the time used an odd tree-navigation system). They filed patents, like all companies do, and Creative was ultimately awarded one about the metadata sorting. In the interim, Creative Labs redesigned its interface to be more iPod-like--no more trees, just simple, obvious menus. This was sometime around 2003, as I recall.

Now, 2005 rolls around and Creative has final approval of its metadata patent. The iPod has crushed all of its products in popularity and sales, and Creative has a patent that Apple doesn't have, so they strike back because their own advertising and marketing couldn't diminish the iPod's popularity. They sue because they patented the idea that you could sort music by track number or album name or genre.

There are two big problems with Creative doing this. 1. Their patent is ridiculous, and it would still be if Apple held it instead. Sorting digital music files by metadata has been done for a decade now, not only on computers, but also on portable devices--so it's not even that Creative moved into a new market first. It's also an obvious idea--how else would you sort music files? It might have been justifiable to patent the idea of metadata on music files back in 1995 or so when work on the ID3 tagging system started, but not in 2001.

2. They copied Apple! Creative changed their firmware to have a more sensible navigation system, after seeing the iPod released and how people could pick one up and use it after a few seconds of messing around with it. Creative has never had that kind of ease of use. The iPod came on the scene and showed everyone how to do it right, and once it started selling rapidly, everyone else jumped on the bandwagon.

It starts with the sound quality; creative has more experience with it and is still the best deal on the market for portable and PC-sound!

More experience doesn't make more quality. RCA has been in business a long time, but they don't make the best speakers. Creative's sound cards aren't and have rarely (since the original SoundBlaster) been the best. If you look at waveform production, you'll find the iPod reproduces sound pretty faithfully--especially the shuffle and nano. Creative and some other manufacturers have, in the past few years, focused on improving this so that they can claim "higher fidelity" than the iPod, but if there were no iPod, they'd still be using the same so-so DSPs they did a few years back.

 

[luminosity]

So the bottom-line: Ipod HAS good players but the success is that they became a hype, not more than that

That makes no sense. Apple created iPods, and by definition, iPods are good mp3 players, created by Apple Computers.

 

[Seasought]

...

So the bottom-line: Ipod HAS good players but the success is that they became a hype, not more than that. They are NOT better than any other player on the market.

If iPods were crap, but really well-marketed crap, its success would not have lasted this long.

 

[balamw]

More experience doesn't make more quality. RCA has been in business a long time, but they don't make the best speakers. Creative's sound cards aren't and have rarely (since the original SoundBlaster) been the best.

In fact one could say that Creative has used their market share leadership position in the sound card arena in a very Microsoft-like fashion to crush and/or acquire various companies that were potentital competitors with better performance/quality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Labs#Criticism So far w.r.t iPods Apple seems happy to comptete without asserting its patents offensively or acquiring upstart competitors...

B

 

[AsGard]

More experience doesn't make more quality. RCA has been in business a long time, but they don't make the best speakers. Creative's sound cards aren't and have rarely (since the original SoundBlaster) been the best. If you look at waveform production, you'll find the iPod reproduces sound pretty faithfully--especially the shuffle and nano. Creative and some other manufacturers have, in the past few years, focused on improving this so that they can claim "higher fidelity" than the iPod, but if there were no iPod, they'd still be using the same so-so DSPs they did a few years back.

If it would be inversted Apple was also forced to update the less good DSP used.. goes for everything I geuss.. one manufacturer pushes the other to do better.
About RCA and quality: yes that's true but it remains good quality, better than some other old brands do.. Some beter equipment there is the Spanish Beyma and the French Focal. Both offer quality according the price.

So what I want to say is:
People are acting as if IPod IS the ONLY ONE player that is thé best and that is sorely mistaken. I've said they ARE good but NOT by definition better than any other player. You should compare players, look at all options and look to price/quality before impulsif buying something. So not like many customers buy today: Everyone buys brand X so I MUST buy me one to be part of the gang..! I get goose-bumps and risen hair from that.

And even if the players were better than the rest the fact that it's hyped should be enough reason for (wiser) people not to buy.

 

[balamw]

And even if the players were better than the rest the fact that it's hyped should be enough reason for (wiser) people not to buy.

I'd probably take you more seriously without statements like that. So if your favored Creative was on top and the "sheep" were buying 80% Creative players you'd avoid them too? Or would you associate that success with Creative's superior quality?

(FWIW, for me, iTunes is the main draw.)

B