Creative calls the patent as Zen Patent. The patent covers Creative’s interface for portable MP3 players, which allows users to select a song, album or track by navigating a succession of menus. This patent also includes how the files are organized.

As I’ve wrote earlier, eventhough Creative was one of the first companies to produce MP3 players but they lost out to Apple which dominates the MP3 player market with their iPod product. Apple’s iPod, announced in October 2001, 13 months after the shipping of Creative’s Nomad Jukebox, is estimated to account for 80% of sales of digital music players which use hard drives to store music. Creative itself only holds 3.3 percent of the market, according to the NPD Group.

Craig McHugh, president of Creative’s United States operations, said on Wednesday that Apple was the only company that Creative had identified so far that was in violation of the patent, though Creative was investigating others. Creative was focusing on hard-drive-based systems, rather than less-expensive flash-memory systems that typically sport a bare-bones navigation system.

[ Source ]

Below is the abstract for the patent:

A video game and game system incorporating a game character’s sanity level that is affected by occurrences in the game such as encountering a game creature or gruesome situation. A character’s sanity level is modified by an amount determined based on a character reaction to the occurrence such as taking a rest or slowing game progress and/or an amount of character preparation. That is, if a character is prepared for the particular occurrence, the occurrence may have little or no affect on the character’s sanity level. As the character’s sanity level decreases, game play is effected such as by controlling game effects, audio effects, creating hallucinations and the like. In this context. the same game can be played differently each time it is played.

Nintendo filled the patent on December 14, 2000, under the name of Nintendo of America.

[ Via Slashdot ]

This is another strike for Apple, after previously Microsoft beat them on the patent of iPod technology. Moreover, Creative said that the patent applied to its player, as well as some competing products such as the Apple’s iPod and iPod mini. Eventhough Creative was one of the first companies to produce MP3 players but they lost out to Apple which dominates the MP3 player market with their iPod product. Apple’s iPod, announced in October 2001, 13 months after the shipping of Creative’s Nomad Jukebox, is estimated to account for 80% of sales of digital music players which use hard drives to store music.

In its press release, Creative said Apple had filed for a patent for a user interface in a multimedia player in late 2002, but its application had been recently rejected.

[ Via Slashdot ]