Company Name: Aureal
Description: Aureal Semiconductor Inc. was an American manufacturer of electronics that had been established in 1995 by Kenneth ‘Kip’ Kokinakis who stood as the company’s president and CEO. The company used to be headquartered in Fremont, California.
The company had been recognized in the mid-90s for its technological contribution in the development of PC sound cards which included the product line of audio ASICs referred to as the A3D and the Vortex.
Aureal Semiconductor Inc. had been the result of reorganization in the company Media Vision Technology which then went bankrupt. Media Vision initially was a developer and manufacturer of multimedia technologies such as the Pro Spectrum 16.
Then on March of 1998, E-MU Systems Inc. and Creative Technology Ltd. its auxiliary, charged Aureal for patent infringement. They claimed that Aureal’s Digital Audio Processor called the Vortex 8820 AC’97 breached the U.S. Patent Case No. 5,342,990 which is the Digital Sampling Instrument Employing Cache-Memory that is held by E-MU Systems, Inc.
The executive of the company countersued with a claim that Creative had been responsible for the breach in the patent. After a number of lawsuits the company had won the case in 1999 with an advantageous declaration. Although Aureal was vindicated from the claims for patent breach, the company proved too small that it incurred excessive expenses in legal fees and soon filed for bankruptcy protection.
In September of 2000, Creative Labs acquired the properties of Aureal from the bankruptcy trustee of the company. The said acquisition included patents, trademarks and other Aureal properties including an agreement to free Creative from the breach in patent.
The purchase of the company eliminated the only challenger of Creative in the business of gaming audio. The acquisition also abolished any obligations to compensate Aureal for Creative devices that had incorporated the technology of Aureal.
The technology of Aureal had originated from a program from NASA that was employed in the generation of accurate 3D audio with just a single set of headphones. Aureal had made an attempt at cutting the prices for the units because speakers were very expensive at that time. The company then acquired a number of technologies and gave it the brand name A3D.
In contrast to companies like Creative that manufactures genuine brands and markets its own personal devices, Aureal was a semiconductor company that was reluctant to do the same. Aureal had been able to reverse this notion with the release of its last product referred to as the Aureal SuperQuad.
Although it did not have any intentions of annoying the middlemen, the company did not make an effort to advertise its self-branded merchandise. However, the software component, A3D had been sustained by the 3DMark together with other software designations in the late 90s.
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