Aureal validated by Creative litigation

Sound board company Aureal has said that legal pressure from Creative over alleged patent infringement had benefited the company. Brendan O'Flaherty, VP and general manager at Aureal, said that such actions helped to give his company a higher profile in the marketplace. "In fact, we feel it [the legal action] validates Aureal as a platform. I've noticed a large number of Taiwanese companies in this hall (seven) are saying their boards are A3D compatible. We think this will help promote our boards in the industry." A similar thing had happened with Creative, he pointed out, with companies saying their products were compatible with the SoundBlaster. But Aureal was not going to take any action against cloners who said the technology was A3D compatible, because it showed its sound technology was superior. O'Flaherty said that while law suits were something of a distraction, it meant that Aureal got more press coverage as a result. He said that Creative was perceived as a giant in the audio market, while Aureal was seen as the up-and-coming contender. Aureal was demoing audio technology which O'Flaherty described as the equivalent of audio ray-tracing. The positional audio system gives 3D-like stereo effects. Flatland.COM has recently agreed to use the technology in its virtual reality systems. ®