HiFi Blog: digital audio goodness

The United States Patent and Trademark Office never ceases to amaze. Yesterday it granted Creative the so-called “Zen Patent” (U.S. Patent 6,928,433):

Creative’s invention for the user interface for portable media players enables selection of at least one track in a portable media player as a user sequentially navigates through a hierarchy using three or more successive screens on the display of the player. One example would be the sequence of screens that could display artists, then albums, and then tracks. When the user selects an artist, the player displays a list of albums for that artist. Selection of one of the listed albums then displays a list of tracks on the album.

Basically, if you own an MP3 player that allows you to pick a track by going through the blatantly obvious “Artist → Album → Tracks” process, and the device is made by a company other than Creative, that company is in trouble.

Of course, the no.1 company that comes to mind is Apple, and Creative wants us to make sure since the sub-title of yesterday’s press release regarding the patent is: ”’Zen Patent’ Granted for Invention of its User Interface for Portable Media Players Including Many of Creative’s Zen and NOMAD Jukebox MP3 Players and Found in Some Competing Players Such as the Apple iPod and iPod mini” (emphasis ours).

True, Apple does the same thing by patenting whatever humanly possible, and actually they tried to patent the same thing:

“There has been press coverage recently regarding the rejection of Apple’s patent application, published as Pub. No. U.S. 2004/0055446 for a user
interface in a multimedia player. This Apple patent application was filed on October 28, 2002. A related provisional application was filed by Apple on July 30, 2002, eighteen months after our filing date for the Zen Patent and over twenty months after our NOMAD Jukebox based upon our user interface was on the market,” added Sim.

But wrong is wrong no matter who does it. The best comment regarding the granting of this patent comes from Anything But iPod:

[...] the patent. There are two golden rules: the idea cannot already exist and it cannot be obvious. The patent that Creative is claiming is obvious. Sim Wong Hoo, the chairman and CEO of Creative, even stated that the patent is ”...a way for a user to efficiently and intuitively navigate and select tracks…”. The definition of intuitively is, to know automatically or to know by instinct… in other words, obvious. Creative should not have been awarded this patent; no one should have for this “obvious” reason.

Creative Awarded U.S. Patent on its Invention of User Interface for Portable Media Players [prnewswire.com]

Also read: Zen patent update: Creative considering options