Smartphones From 7 Suppliers Violate Nomad Jukebox Patent, Creative Alleges
Creative Technology filed a string of nearly identical complaints Thursday against seven major manufacturers of Android smartphones, alleging the music user interfaces on their various handsets violate an August 2005 patent for Creative's Nomad Jukebox when used with a preinstalled Google Play music app or another music app proprietary to the individual brand of phone. Google itself isn't named in the complaints.
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Named as defendants in the seven separate actions, all filed the same day in U.S. District Court in Marshall, Texas: (1) BlackBerry (for its Priv smartphone); (2) HTC (for its One M9); (3) Lenovo (for its Motorola-brand Moto X); (4) LG (for its G4); (5) Samsung (for its Galaxy S6); (6) Sony (for its Xperia Z3+); and (7) ZTE (for its ZTE Axon Pro). Representatives of the defendants didn’t comment Friday.
The patent at issue describes methods for the “automatic hierarchical categorization of music by metadata.” Originally assigned and still owned by Creative, the patent (US 6,928,433) lists Californians Howard Egan and Ron Goodman as inventors. Through software "executing on the processor of a portable music playback device," the method "automatically files tracks according to hierarchical structure of categories to organize tracks in a logical order," the patent said. "A user interface is utilized to change the hierarchy, view track names, and select tracks for playback or other operations."
One "drawback" of the early MP3 players was that the storage capacity of flash memory was limited then to an hour or two of music, Creative said in the actions. "Creative envisioned the market potential for significantly higher capacity portable electronic devices," and so it began development of the Nomad Jukebox "using a high-capacity hard drive as the storage medium," it said. "The number of songs that could be stored on this portable electronic device was dramatically greater than the flash based devices -- up to 1,000 songs." But the high capacity raised "a significant and pressing challenge" -- how to conveniently organize and access the ever-growing number of songs stored on these devices "in view of their small display screens and limited controls," it said.
Creative "seized the opportunity to invent a solution" that would manage a large amount of music, and do so "in a manner that allows end users to access songs in a logical and user-friendly manner through sequential steps displayed on the small screen of a portable electronic device," the complaints said. "After months of ongoing work and development, a team of Creative’s engineers in Scotts Valley, California invented a user-friendly interface that simplified navigation on portable electronic devices," they said. "This now-patented invention is directed to methods of accessing media tracks (e.g. music) stored on a portable electronic device by navigating through a hierarchical categorization such as artist, artist name, and song title or genre, genre type, and song title."
Creative showcased the first Nomad Jukebox prototypes at the January 2000 CES, the complaints said. The Nomad, which became a big success, "used the revolutionary accessing methods" claimed in the 6,928,433 patent "to provide users with a convenient interface for managing and accessing all those songs," said the complaints. Those music-accessing methods eventually "set the standard for this new industry of portable media players," they said. All the "innovative inventions" that have resulted from that patent "have now become ubiquitous in the industry," said the documents. Though Apple, "which uses these inventions in its iPod and iPhone products, has taken a license, others in the industry have made use of Creative’s inventions without permission," they said.