aus: Managing Intellectual Property

Apple faces iPod patent challenge
Emma Barraclough, Hong Kong, Sam Mamudi, New York
Creative Technology, a Singapore-based maker of MP3 players, has been awarded a US patent over the user interface technology it says Apple uses for its iPod and iPod mini.

Creative applied for the patent, which it has dubbed Zen, on January 5 2001, five months after it began shipping its Nomad jukebox MP3 player to retail customers in the US. The Apple iPod was launched in October 2001. Creative said the Nomad player was the first portable media player based on the user interface covered in the Zen patent. The USPTO granted the patent, which covers the technology that allows users to navigate and select tracks on their MP3 players, on August 9.

Creative, based in Singapore, is now considering its options. It could choose to sue any rival company it believes has infringed the Zen patent, negotiate licence agreements, or do nothing.

Anan Sivananthan, director of legal services at Creative, said that, as yet, there has been "no communication with Apple", and refused to be drawn on whether other companies may be affected by its Zen patent.

"We have said that the user interface is found in some competing players, such as the Apple iPod and iPod mini."

Creative's August 30 announcement that it had been awarded the Zen patent came less than three weeks after it was revealed that the US Patent and Trademark Office had rejected a patent application filed by Apple in October 2002, which covered similar technology.

The rejection was based on a patent for "auto playlist generation with multiple seed songs" filed by Microsoft five months earlier, in May 2002, and granted this year, after three non-final rejections. Microsoft's patent is understood not to have made any claims over the user interface technology itself, but did discuss the prior art relating to it while detailing its own invention. Microsoft has distanced itself from articles suggesting that the patent threatened the iPod.

"Early reports about the subject matter of our patent were inaccurate in some ways and led some people to make certain conclusions about whether the patent was relevant or not to the iPod," said David Kaefer, director of business development in the IP & Licensing Group at IBM. "While we don't characterize the detailed claims of our patents, I would encourage people to read some of the more recent coverage on this issue, which generally has better context."

Later reports were more restrained about the scope of the Microsoft patent.

Said Creative's Sivananthan: "Very recently, there has been a lot of press about Apple's patent application [for a user interface] being rejected. We decided to issue a press release to announce our recently granted patent, and also highlight the fact that we actually came out with this user interface long before Apple launched the iPod."

You can see the published patent applications filed by Microsoft here and Apple here:

The issued Creative patent can be viewed here.