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Apple Faces Patent Fight With Small Asian Rival

Posted on: Friday, 2 September 2005, 12:00 CDT

Creative Technology, a maker of portable music players, has accused Apple Computer of violating a newly granted software patent that covers the way users navigate music selections.

Creative Technology, which is based in Singapore and has U.S. operations in Milpitas, California, said on Wednesday that it would consider every option available to defend the patent, including possible legal action. Apple declined to comment on the patent.

The patent covers Creative's software interface for portable music players, which allows users to select a song, album or track by navigating a succession of menus. The patent office awarded the patent on Aug. 9.

Creative uses the navigation technology on many of its portable music devices, which account for 3.3 percent of the market, according to the NPD Group. Apple's iPod, which in large part owes its popularity to its easy-to-use navigation system, has about 74 percent of the American market.

Craig McHugh, president of Creative's U.S. operations, said that Apple was the only company that Creative had identified so far that was in violation of the patent. "We are looking at all our alternatives right now," he said. "We have always been very vigorous in our defense of our patent portfolio."

The latest development comes a few months after the Patent and Trademark Office rejected an Apple application for a patent on some of the user interface concepts of the iPod, on the ground that Microsoft had filed for a similar patent.

"Apple is the 500-pound gorilla," said Mark Goldstein, an intellectual property lawyer with the SoCal IP Law Group, in Westlake Village, California. With the patent, he said, Creative is "trying to show they're in the same league" as Apple.

Creative said it first shipped music players with the navigation system in September 2000, and filed the patent application in January 2001. Apple announced the iPod in October 2001.

Apple has several options, including requesting that the patent office re-examine the patent. If Apple fights the matter in court, the company would need to show the existence of "prior art," that is, similar technology that existed previous to Creative's use of the technology.

Source: International Herald Tribune

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