New iPod Interface Patent Threat Surfaces from Creative Technology

Creative Technology Ltd., with inventors Ron Goodman and Howard Egan, was issued patent number 6,928,433 for a hierarchical menu interface on a portable music playback device. The application was filed in January of 2001, some nine months before the iPod was released in October of 2001. Here is the abstract:

A method, performed by software executing on the processor of a portable music playback device, that automatically files tracks according to hierarchical structure of categories to organize tracks in a logical order. A user interface is utilized to change the hierarchy, view track names, and select tracks for playback or other operations.

This patent is much closer to the iPod interface patent application submitted by Jeffrey Robbin, Steve Jobs and Timothy Wasko than the one granted to John Platt of Microsoft that we previously discussed. But it is a different invention, one that we question after reading over the 16 claims.

It seems to us, that the Creative patent is for nothing more than an obvious and simple application of the common hierarchichal menu to the user interface of a "portable music playback device" and a process for sorting by identified attributes. Perhaps it is the first application of such to a portable music player but there is nothing original nor certainly unobvious about this as required to be a defensible patent. The hierarchical menu as a simple table of contents with sections, chapters and sub-chapters has been around a long time, commonly used for many things and perfectly obvious. Sorting by attributes has been around just as long, is just as commonly used and is just as obvious. [Bill Fox]