If You Can't Beat 'Em, Beat 'Em With A Patent

from the patently-obvious dept

Creative Labs has made a lot of noise over the past few years in its unsuccessful battle to unseat Apple as the top media player manufacturer — its latest complaint being that Apple to buying up all the flash memory and creating a shortage for everybody else. Now, Creative’s boss says it will “pursue aggressively” a patent it was awarded back in August that covers hierarchical menu-based user interfaces on media players, such as that of the iPod. What makes Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo’s statements a little more interesting is that they came at the launch of the company’s latest media player, a color-screen model that plays video, but bears more than a passing resemblance to the video iPod. Of course, since intellectual property’s so important to Mr. Sim, we’re sure his company came up with the design without any influence from other companies’ products. Creative wants to make its money from MP3 players. Apparently if it can’t do it in the marketplace, it will try in the courts.


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