iPod Defeated by Creative?

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has succeeded what none of the players from the MP3 player market have.

Creative has won a patent which could cause iPod a lot of problems. To be more precise, Creative has succeeded to patent the song navigational system used by iPod. This opens the door to a lot of lawsuits and royalty payments.

Creative officials are analyzing the implications related to the patent in their possession and they haven't decided yet whether to go against iPod or not. Considering that not long ago, Microsoft announced an alliance with Creative, Samsung and Philips with the purpose of finding a competitor suitable for iPod, it's not difficult to anticipate the decision reached by Creative.

It's interesting to notice that other companies are using the same navigational system. Will Creative ask them to pay royalties? For iPod this is the second bad news; last month, another patent was refused to Apple, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Microsoft deciding that it should go Microsoft.