Creative seeks injunction against Apple
Creative Technology on Monday filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission seeking an injunction against Apple Computer that would prohibit the company from importing its iPods, which are manufactured overseas, into the United States.
Apple's iPods are designed at the company's Cupertino, Calif.-based design studios but manufactured at facilities in the Far East. Under Section 337 of Tariff Act of 1930, imported products that allegedly violate United States intellectual property rights can be barred from entry into the country.
Creative is seeking an exclusion order and cease and desist order against Apple, prohibiting it from engaging in the sale, marketing, importation or sale after importation of its flagship iPod and iPod nano players.
Also Monday, the company filed a lawsuit against Apple in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California seeking an injunction and increased damages for the iPod maker's "willful infringement of the Zen Patent."
The Zen Patent, which was awarded to Creative on August 9, 2005, is for the invention of the software interface used by the company in its Zen and NOMAD Jukebox MP3 players. Creative charges that Apple has used the same interface for its iPod, iPod nano and iPod mini players.
75 Comments
Sounds like another repeat of Apple vs. Apple (Beatles vs. Apple Computer)....whenever Apple is at the top of the game, a bunch of petty idiots try to leach off of their success.
Of course, we all know that the outcome will again be favorable for Apple.
Also, the interface Creative uses is NOTHING like the one Apple uses, unless I am missing something?
I don't know whether ALL software patents are bad, but some sure are.
If Apple's violating a nonsense Patent, they can still be hurt by it. Forced to ship those iPods back, program a new UI, and face a sales void until the revised models can ship.
So hopefully they're not violating the patent!
PS, the iPod interface works exactly like the OS X Column view. Which in turn is based on the NeXT column view.
Why are they even bothering? Do they honestly think they're going to get Apple to stop selling iPods in the United States? \
Apple would probably sooner buy out Creative and drop their entire product line than stop selling iPods as-is.
This begs for additional details. Based solely on the information in this article, this complaint has absolutely no merit. There's a little thing known as "prior work". The iPod interface hasn't changed all that much since its initial 1st generation release and I'm pretty sure that it came well before the Creative Zen.
Ridiculous!