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August 26, 2006

Apple settles with Creative for $100M



Months of legal battles between Creative and Apple finally came to a close on Wednesday when Apple agreed to settle its dispute over its iPod navigation system with Creative for a cool $100 Million. 5 lawsuits filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission, claimed that Apple had violated Creative’s patent for the navigation system for its Zen line of MP3 players. Creative’s nav system uses a hierarchal tree structure that allows users to select a broad category, such as Album, and then the tree expands to show the user all of the tracks of that album. If Apple would have lost the cases, Creative would have been able to block the importing of Apple’s iPod into the US since it is manufactured over seas.

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