Apple Settles with Creative over iPod Patents

[Jessterw]

http://www.wired.com/news/wireservice/0,71649-0.html?tw=rss.index

Apple Computer will pay $100 million to rival Creative Technology to settle patent lawsuits over technology for navigating through songs on the popular iPod digital music player, the companies said Wednesday.

What's more telling, in some ways is found here:

http://blog.wired.com/cultofmac/index.blog?entry_id=1544347

"Apple has built a huge ecosystem for its iPod and with our upcoming participation in the Made for iPod program we are very excited about this new market opportunity for our speaker systems, our just-introduced line of earphones and headphones, and our future family of X- Fi audio enhancement products."

Seems that Creative wins doubly. It gets a nice payout over a patent (yes, the payout is actually for one patent) that should never have been granted (to either company), and it has a nice lead-in to a more profitable market.