Creative Lawsuit against LG HTC Samsung Sony ZTE Lenovo Motorola Blackberry

Creative is suing LG HTC Samsung Sony ZTE Lenovo Motorola and Blackberry. Why SumGuy and what is this Creative lawsuit about? I will circle back to that in just a bit, first and foremost let’s respond to the unasked question majority of you are asking; Who the hell is creative? well little Timmy, the ill-fitting name belongs to a Singapore-based outfit that designs and makes computer peripherals mostly in the audio realm e.g. headphones, microphones, audio players, etc. Ring any bells? no? didn’t think so. They were popular back in the wild days of the late 90s and have been stuck in their little bubble for a long time now.

Now back to the question of why the lawsuit, and why against such a massive list of the who’s who of Android OEMs. Most likely because their coffers are beginning to run a little low for their tastes thanks to being utterly mediocre. Creative has filed a lawsuit with the ITC (USA International Trade Commission ), claiming that all the OEMs are stealing their basic design and infringing on their patent that allows a mechanism to show hierarchical categories and songs. Yes. Creative is saying they invented displaying things in a hierarchy-based menu.

Creative is asking ITC to ban all infringing devices in the US. That’s a LOT of phones. Unfortunately for everyone involved in this lawsuit, creative already took Apple to court for this exact thing for their iPod line of audio players and won 100 Million USD, making this current lawsuit a practical slam dunk. Sadly for Creative unless some of the players decide to settle they won’t be seeing the money for a while. ITC isn’t known for its speedy resolutions. We will all see this trickle down to some money in Creative’s pocket over time.

List of the Company and their US subs that are being sued by Creative:

• ZTE Corporation of Guangdong, China;
• ZTE (USA) Inc. of Richardson, TX;
• Sony Corporation of Tokyo, Japan;
• Sony Mobile Communications, Inc., of Tokyo, Japan;
• Sony Mobile Communications AB of Lund, Sweden;
• Sony Mobile Communications (USA), Inc., of Atlanta, GA;
• Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., of Seoul, Republic of Korea;
• Samsung Electronics America, Inc., of Ridgefield Park, NJ;
• LG Electronics, Inc., of Seoul, Republic of Korea;
• LG Electronics U.S.A., Inc., of Englewood Cliffs, NJ;
• LG Electronics Mobilecomm U.S.A., Inc., of San Diego, CA;
• Lenovo Group Ltd. of Beijing, China;
• Lenovo (United States) Inc. of Morrisville, NC;
• Motorola Mobility LLC of Chicago, IL;
• HTC Corporation of Taoyuan, Taiwan;
• HTC America, Inc., of Bellevue, WA;
• Blackberry Ltd. of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada;
• Blackberry Corporation of Irving, Texas.

Source ITC.