Apple finished today at $57.61, down 72 cents. The negative news for Apple today was that the other MP3 device company Creative has gotten the International Trade Commission to launch an investigation into whether the iPod infringes on Creative's patents for the Zen player. Creative's stock rose some 5% today as news came out.
Creative is trying to overthrow Apple, but Apple is pretty firmly cemented in the #1 position for digital music players. As a result Creative and Apple have been circling each other like a pair of territorial yard dogs, with both companies filing patent complaints against each other over the last year.
[Disclosure: I own Apple stock at the date of this post]
Apple after the bell 6/14/06: down a bit as Creative challenges Apple's patents
Posted Jun 14th 2006 9:43PM by Tobias Buckell
Filed under: After the bell, Press releases, Products and services, Law, Apple Inc (AAPL)
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-15-2006 @ 8:48AM
doulas mcintyre said...
iPod's IP Issues
The decline in Apple's (AAPL) stock recently may be at least in part due to intellectual property issues with the iPod and other devices. As Microsoft (MSFT) has found out in the past, having the hot hand in tech often bring patent probes from less fortunate companies.
The bad news yesterday for Apple was that the U.S. International Trade Commission will review the claims of Singapore-based Creative Technology Ltd. that it has patents on several of the interfaces used in the Apple device. Creative has a line of Zen products that compete with the Apple portable media player, although not very well based on Zen media player sales.
Apple has filed a suit of its own against Creative, but, if Apple loses the was, it could cost the company plenty.
Apple is also being sued by Burst.com which has a patent on buffering technology used in video servers. Burst has had some success in these actions including a victory over Microsoft which cost the software giant $60 million. The Apple streaming architecture is not so different from the Windows Media Server and Windows Media Player that Microsoft uses.
Apple may become the target of an ever-increasing rash of these claims. The hurt Microsoft by taking management time and legal resource and Apple shareholders should not be surprised it the same holds true again.
Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at douglasamcintyre@gmail.com. He does now own securities in any of the companies he writes about.
6-15-2006 @ 8:49AM
doulas mcintyre said...
iPod's IP Issues
The decline in Apple's (AAPL) stock recently may be at least in part due to intellectual property issues with the iPod and other devices. As Microsoft (MSFT) has found out in the past, having the hot hand in tech often bring patent probes from less fortunate companies.
The bad news yesterday for Apple was that the U.S. International Trade Commission will review the claims of Singapore-based Creative Technology Ltd. that it has patents on several of the interfaces used in the Apple device. Creative has a line of Zen products that compete with the Apple portable media player, although not very well based on Zen media player sales.
Apple has filed a suit of its own against Creative, but, if Apple loses the was, it could cost the company plenty.
Apple is also being sued by Burst.com which has a patent on buffering technology used in video servers. Burst has had some success in these actions including a victory over Microsoft which cost the software giant $60 million. The Apple streaming architecture is not so different from the Windows Media Server and Windows Media Player that Microsoft uses.
Apple may become the target of an ever-increasing rash of these claims. The hurt Microsoft by taking management time and legal resource and Apple shareholders should not be surprised it the same holds true again.
Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at douglasamcintyre@gmail.com. He does now own securities in any of the companies he writes about.