[angelmb]

"Creative reportedly sold in Japan 3,700 Zen digital players infected by the virus W32.Wullik.B@mm.
This virus on the HD could potentially harm any PCs upon connecting to the player. Creative will probably have to beg for more money from Apple to counter the commercial impact of this misadventure."


"Creative, as every competitors from Apple on this market suffer of the supremacy of the iPod.
The firme announced they got a US patent defining "a means to select one or many music files on a digital player via a succession of screens organized hierarchically".
As could be expected, they then blamed the iPod for doing the same.
A good bet would be to suppose it won't be long until a judiciary action is taken.
One could have expected a company by the name of "Creative" would use other ways to get market shares"

Way to go Creative

[turtle777]

PWZEND!!!!111!oneone

-t

[olePigeon]

They'll probably help Diamond and Microsoft sue Apple out of the MP3 market with patent claims.

If you can't beat 'em... patent something and sue.

[E's Lil Theorem]

I wonder how strong their claims really are. I reckon we'll find out soon enough.

[iMOTOR]

Apple has prior art on the iPod and iPods were sold before the patent was filed, so chances are slim that Apple could get sued out of selling iPods, common law defiantly applies.

It still begs the question, why on earth did Apple not file a patent before the iPod went to market??

[rjenkinson]

Originally Posted by iMOTOR

It still begs the question, why on earth did Apple not file a patent before the iPod went to market??

possibly because apple didn't design the ipod's interface? i thought portalplayer was responsible for that.

-r.

[ironknee]

why wouldn't portal player patent it? i remember at some keynote, jobs was smug about the ipod being patent pending...fire the lawyers!

[Salty]

This is why I said they should buy Rio... would protect em from a lot of future law suites. That said, I think it's lame that someone could patent an interface for a concept that's already been around for a long time. And besides with the Newton wouldn't Apple already have patents on mobile interfaces?

[Mister Elf]

Unfortunately, though, Rio is dead.

[JoshuaZ]

Do they charge extra for the virus?

[Salty]

Originally Posted by JoshuaZ

Do they charge extra for the virus?

Good question, Dell and HP roll the cost of Windows into their machines, so there's already a precedent for viruses getting added into the overall cost of a product.

[sminch]

getting them pre-installed saves having to go out and find your own, i guess, so you're like every other windows user right from the first time you power up.

sminch

[Salty]

Now now, we've all heard the stats, it's hardly any trouble to get a virus on Windows if you have an internet connection. Last I heard it was 9 minutes connected to broadband...