Reply 80 of 104, by ZanQuance
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brassicGamer wrote on 2020-02-21, 14:13:ZanQuance wrote on 2020-02-19, 21:47:They didn't pay Adlib a cent for "Adlib Compatibility" and yet they forced others to pay them for the Sound Blaster compatibility claim.
It's kind of a moot point considering Ad Lib's inaction at the time. Had developers cited OPL2 as the supported hardware in their literature and setup programs then that would have been established as the standard, and simply purchasing chips from Yamaha would have given manufacturers the right to cite compatibility. Instead, 'AdLib' was the de facto standard. Are we saying Ad Lib Inc should have sued Creative the moment they put 'Ad Lib Compatible' on their boxes? Maybe they should have because, as you say, it was unlicensed used of the name, and AdLib should have received fees for that (along with everyone else that used that implementation of the Yamaha sound.
So we're saying that Ad Lib weren't clever enough with their engineering. Obscuring the identity of the OPL2 wasn't enough and Creative (among others) got around it easily. Are Creative considered devious because they did what Ad Lib should have done from the beginning? Or are they devious because they brought outright Capitalist attitudes to an innate market? Because it sounds like Ad Lib failed in a Capitalist market for being naive. Creative were anything but naive.
Sorry didn't mean to cause confusion with what I posted, I was saying it's pretty hypocritical of Creative to sue others for making a SB compatible claim and expecting other companies to license from them.
They were clearly using "100% Adlib compatibility" to market their card, and should have simply claimed 100% OPL2 compatibility, or do it right and license Adlibs trademark for the use of the name on their products.
It's a hypocritical attitude when they owed the early success of the Sound Blasters to the use of a name people were familiar with, and yet they sued others for making a SB Compatible claim.
If Adlib wanted to protect it's trademark then they should have contacted Creative over this issue and have them remove the Adlib name off their products.
Creative is super quick to defend their IP in court, yet continually have no issues using other companies IP.
That's all I was saying.