Stupid Patent No. 1943754123

[Diplo]

Yet another example of patent stupidity from Creative:

One of Apple's main rivals, Creative Technology, has been awarded a patent for the interface used on many digital music players.

Creative said the patent applied to its players, as well as some competing products such as the Apple's iPod and iPod mini.

The patent covers how files on a music player are organised...

...Creative said it had applied for the patent, dubbed the Zen Patent, on 5 January 2001 and was awarded it on 9 August.

Apple's iPods dominate the digital music player market
It applies to the way music tracks are organised and navigated on a player through a hierarchy using three or more successive screens.

For example, this would be a sequence of screens that could display artists, then albums and then tracks.

It's about time consumers told hardware manufacturers exactly what they think of their anti-competitive, anti-progress patent applications that only hinder their customer base. I certainly won't be buying any Creative hardware any more.

 

[AlphaWolf]

It's about time consumers told hardware manufacturers exactly what they think of their anti-competitive, anti-progress patent applications that only hinder their customer base. I certainly won't be buying any Creative hardware any more.

I imagine the guys over at apple are upset they didn't think of patenting it first. I don't blame creative, I blame the system.

 

[Diplo]

I imagine the guys over at apple are upset they didn't think of patenting it first. I don't blame creative, I blame the system.

I dunno, I don't see Apple slapping patents all over the place (if they did Windows would probably be in big trouble!). It wasn't long ago I remember Creative forcing iD software into an agreement because of the way they enforce stupid patents:

We were prepared to use a two-pass algorithm that gave equivalent results at a speed hit, but we negotiated the deal with Creative so that we were able to use the zfail method without having to actually pay any cash. It was tempting to take a stand and say that our products were never going to use any advanced Creative/3dlabs products because of their position on patenting gaming software algorithms, but that would only have hurt the users.

(123 extra characters because stupid forum software can't count!)

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

This only applies in the US right?
Why haven't patents been reformed yet?

 

[Guden Oden]

This patent surely must be unenforceable as it should fall into the "obvious solution" category. If for no other reason, it should be invalidated because databases have used sorting schemes like these for years, if not decades.

 

[Simon F]

Yet another example of patent stupidity from Creative:.

Having read that, I'd better re-organise my CD collection, because I have it grouped by Artist..... don't want to get sued for "alternative applications" of this patent.

 

[Sxotty]

Actually Diplo what I read went something like this.

Apple was trying to patent their user interface, and the patent was denied b/c creatie already patented one that was the same. Yes it is despicable and stupid, but Apple was trying to do the exact same thing so that they the grand makers of the ipod could screw others in the market.