Creative Technology Ltd., a maker of portable media players, sued Apple Computer Inc. in federal court and filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission on Monday accusing the iPod maker of infringing on one of Creative's patents.

The Singapore-based company alleged in both complaints that Apple was violating its patent on a navigation system and method for organizing and accessing music on portable players. Creative has dubbed the patent, the "Zen patent," after its brand-name Zen media players.

In the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Creative sought an injunction and unspecified damages. In its complaint with the trade commission, Creative asked the federal organization to launch a patent violation investigation and force Apple to stop selling the iPod.

Representatives with Cupertino-based Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

According to the trade complaint, Creative was granted the so-called Zen patent in August 2005 after applying for it in January 2001. The company unveiled the navigation system in a prototype mobile music player called the NOMAD Jukebox in January 2000 and has since used it in its NOMAD and Zen products.

In early 2001, representatives of Apple and Creative, including Apple CEO
Steve Jobs, met to discuss ways they could work together, the complaint stated. Apple requested to license Creative's technology and also suggested it could invest in a potential spinoff of Creative's music player business, but Creative declined both proposals, according to Creative's complaint.

Then in October 2001, Apple launched its iPod — the iconic gadget that now dominates the portable media player market.

Apple's U.S. market share was more than 72 percent in 2005, while rivals such as Creative, were in the single-digit range, according to The NPD Group market research firm.

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News source: Yahoo! News

lmao, and that's coming from the guys that made a lot of ipod ripoff's. And they even sell it for the same price, why you would buy a copy if the real thing has the same pricetag.
look at this
http://dabbert.nl/weblog/pivot/entry.php?id=271

Even the colorscheme is the same.

THey're within their rights on this one, even tho the iPod is a better product than any of their pieces of crap. The patent was filed in 2001, when their Nomad players were the only products on the market. It's either gonna be settled out of court (likely), an injunction will be filed against Apple that stops them from selling the iPod until a new control system is devised (less likely), a judge will have to throw out the patent (unlikely), or Creative will be granted punitive damages along with an injuction (very unlikely). Creative has balls going for an injuction, but in the end I'm willing to bet that they're just holding out for more money than Jobs offered. In the end, Apple doesn't have a lot going for them on this, which is why Jobs went in with talks to begin with. The patent should probably never have been approved, but it's going to be nigh-impossible to get it yanked now that it is.

Oh, and the color was picked by the author just to get a rise out of iPod fans, those POS' come in a dozen different colors.

In turn, the iPod ripped off the old Nintendo Gameboy with minor modifications to the layout. I also have an ancient PDA that is eerily similar to an iPod except for it's size and button layout.

It's a rectangle with a window and some buttons underneath it. Maybe Nintendo should sue Apple for ripping off their novel idea of the rectangle with a window and buttons beneath it idea.

Some patents are just incredibly stupid and should never have been granted.

teelie, it's not the layout - it's tje software user interface that's been patented. kinda like, say, the start menu in windows.

creative hold a patent on the way the ipod lets users browse for music, for some reason.

i wonder if after this if Apple should implement a MacOS interface. That would be nice.

I know, I was referring to the comment above made by DJP claiming Creative ripped off the iPod design. And seeing as Creative owns the patent on the software, iPod is actually the one doing the rip off.

I really don't think that user interfaces should be patentable. Like, maybe copyright the art involved in your UI... but the point of a User Interface is to provide the user with a logical and intuitive interface for them to use. I don't think it's any suprise that a digital music player offers various ways of sorting music by various tags (artist, album, etc.), would provide some way to navigate a vertical menu (It makes sense given the shape and size of hard disks, etc.) with the fewest controls necessary (which are of course derived from playback controls)...

If I had never seen a Nomad, or an iPod, and I was asking myself the question "How would a user best interact with this device" I'd probably come up with a very similar interface, because it's the most intuitive design from both a hardware and a software perspective for the most part.

software patents are always a tricky business. at the end of the day there are valid reasons for them (like when someone has done something TRULY innovative) but a lot of the time they are absolutely lame (double clicking, anyone?).

this one seems to fall in the middle ground. i'm not really sure if it's worthwhile or not. i guess it's up to the courts to decide.