Take a look at this people…
http://gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?whichpage=1&pagesize=20&topic_id=181647
There is nothing you can do about that except boycotting creative.
I read about that some days ago… well I won’t buy anything from em again (so far I’d bought one soundcard and one graphics card).
It all looks rather a mess. AFAICS id knew they’d win and just couldn’t be bothered to pursue it (despite their spinning that they’ve been forced into it and they’re a really nice company that abhors patents etc) - and perhaps too it’s a clever excuse for Carmack to justify extending the development time/budget for D3 a little because he’s now “forced” to factor in additional code that wasn’t on the schedule.
Meanwhile, Creative is desperately trying to spin this affair into some free publicity for THEM (read their press release resposne - it spends a lot of time listing the features of their latest sound technology and why it’s so good and how much better it is than the competition). And also trying to set themselves up with something they can show to their shareholders at year-end to justify whatever they spend on long-term / non-audio research.
Objectively, there appears to be clear prior art. In addition, Creative appear to have talked about it openly prior to filing the patent, in such a way that other experts were able to invent it. Both of these invalidate the patent. Obviously, we don’t have all the evidence, but it would seem likely that the patent has no value and would simply be dissolved if it went to court.
Presumably, id went to Creative, pointed this out, and said “now, you’re going to lose if you take us to court. But we don’t want to spend the money on going to court. And we have much more important things to worry about - in particular, we’ve got our hands full with our upcoming launch. So, lets work something out, yes?”. And Creative probably saw this as a great opportunity to make up for the fact that their technology was a bit crappier than they’re telling everyone, and had been ommitted from D3. Creative probably said “Yeah, but look: we can tie up your lawyers and take out an injunction preventing you from selling D3 until the court case is settled. Could go on for years. So, even though we’d lose, you’d lose out more in the long run. Ride my boomstick!”
At which point id caved in for the sake of concentrating on keeping their launch on track (which has already cost them wads of money in preparation - big launches are planned a long way in advance, you have to get printing, DVD-pressing, distribution trucks, mass-marketing advertising copy, etc all setup a long way in advance) rather than do the moral thing and quash the patent.
Just my $0.02…
[quote]In addition, Creative appear to have talked about it openly prior to filing the patent, in such a way that other experts were able to invent it. Both of these invalidate the patent.
[/quote]
While that may be true in Europe, I think the US allows a patent to be filed up to 12 months after initial publicity. A distinction that lost IBM the possibility of European patents on high temperature super conductors.