"Patently" Infringing

Yesterday Creative technology was awarded the patent for orgnasing digital music under different categories. This is similar to the way music is stored in an IPOD and thus this patent may mean APPLE may have to share its fortunes with Creative.
Creative's CEO also said that they had the NOMAD jukebox 13 months before Apple came out with their IPOD.
So these guys had the idea much before Apple did. I decided to check out what they did, financially, with this idea and the one year lead they had. Comapring the two stock prices on yahoo showed this -

Apple stock has gone up by 150% where as Creative's stock went down by about 10% in the last on year. Well, may be stock price is not a good indication of the company's performance. May be we can compare income of the two companies-

A quick check of their balance sheet showed this:
(net income)

2004 Creative 134 mil Apple 276 mil

2003 Creative 23 mil Apple 69 mil

2002 Creative -19 mil Apple 65mil

From 2003 to 2004 Apple's income has increased by 200 million where as that of Creative has gone up by about 100 million. Creative's statement, from 2004, attributes the growth to increased sales from their MP3 players and other personal entertainment products. Looks like Creative's growth has been pretty good but just that they could have done much better than Apple with the advantage of being in th market before them.