The Sound of One Hand Clapping -- Creative Zen and Apple Achieve Enlightenment

In a move which should give everyone pause, Steve Jobs has managed to find a way to make paying $100 million to settle a patent case work for him. The settlement last week of the Creative Zen iPod patent case against Apple, with Apple agreeing to pay that large chunk of change, also included a clause which gave Apple the ability to recover some of that sum if Creative manages to license the patent to other MP3 manufacturers. Thus Apple, caught by the early Creative Zen patent, benefits both ways. Creative sues Apple's competitors at its own expense, making those competitors incur legal expenses and putting their products at risk, while Apple sits back and lets them fight it out and gets a cut of whatever Creative takes in.

Looks like they don't call Jobs the "Visual Zen Master" for nothing.