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http://www.macnn.com/articles/02/05/10/macromedia.beats/

Macromedia beats Adobe in counterclaims

updated 07:55 pm EDT, Fri May 10, 2002

 
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Macromedia today announced that a San Francisco jury ruled in favor of the software developer in a counterclaims patent suit against archrival Adobe Systems. Macromedia is expected to ask the court for an immediate injunction against Adobe to prevent further infringement of its patents, relating to blended elements and automatic re-blending features, allegedly infringed upon by the Adobe Illustrator suite. Adobe is expected to appeal the rulling, which awarded $4.8 million in damages. This comes on the heels of a ruling, in another case, that favored Adobe on other claims of patent infringement against Macromedia. Macromedia is expected to appeal the $2.8M verdict awarded to Adobe and moving forward with another case against Adobe, scheduled for 2003.


by MacNN Staff

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  1. suhail

    Senior User

    Joined: Nov 1999

    0
    05/10, 09:02pm | report spam | Reply |

    GOOD

    Good. Now lets use that Judge and Jury, to re-evaluate Microsoft's Rip-off of the Mac's interface and Mouse.

    Fact: Apple purchased the overly primitive Mouse and interface from Xerox for $1,000,000 of Apple stock, which soon after, sky-rocketted. But Mr. Gates stole it all from Apple and made Windoze.

  1. chas_m

    Moderator

    Joined: Aug 2001

    0
    05/10, 09:48pm | report spam | Reply |

    THIS is fun ...

    ... it may be enjoyable to read, but these two companies sniping at each other can only spell trouble for the Mac community. Maybe we could send Jimmy Carter in?

  1. MacNN.com Reader

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jul 2001

    0
    05/10, 11:07pm | report spam | Reply |

    We lose!

    Macromedia's Rob Burgess sums it up quite well. "The score is now Adobe one, Macromedia one, customers zero."

    The only real winners are the bloodsucking lawyers. Software should be a game of one-upmanship and next version catch-up between rival companies, not backstabbing in the courtroom.

    Now all of these products have to drop features or figure out workarounds. Sheesh, I wonder how MM is going to replace the functionality of the dozens of tear off/dockable palettes in Dreamweaver MX, or how Adobe is going to rework blending in Illustrator. :-(

  1. palegolas

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Dec 1999

    0
    05/11, 04:52am | report spam | Reply |

    stop

    Whyyy... can't they just be friends and stop getting at each other like that? We users soon need to purchase both Adobe's and Macromedia's products (which we can't afford) just because they prevent each other from using each other's ideas. Maybe that's the whole point. They don't want to lose customers. But they sure will lose customers if they start setting up barriers of what they can't do.

  1. j4

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: May 2002

    0
    05/11, 04:59am | report spam | Reply |

    I can't decide...

    I'm no lawyer so perhaps someone can enlighten me on the actual legal term to use for this:

    Is it a "slap fight" or more of a "pissing contest"?

  1. Rob Huigsloot

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: May 1999

    0
    05/11, 08:12am | report spam | Reply |

    Software prices

    Now I know why the software products from both these company's are so expensive...

  1. MacNN.com Reader

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jul 2001

    0
    05/12, 04:34pm | report spam | Reply |

    Re: stop

    Whyyy... can't they just be friends and stop getting at each other like that?

    Well, the obvious answer is because they want money. But it goes deeper than that. Sadly, U.S. patent & trademark law is stupidly set up. You see, if a company doesn't legally fight people from using its trademarks, they lose their right to that trademark. The idea is that this prevents people from keeping the rights to a trademark they don't use anymore, for example, if Apple stopped using an apple as their logo, but still had the rights to it, no one else would be able to use it for years and years afterward even though Apple no longer used it.

    But what's funny is that copyright law is completely different. With copyrights, the courts have no problem with allowing rightsholders to maintain ownership for 75 years (and every decade or so, they increase the length for rights... I have no doubt that, with digital intellectual property being able to last almost literally forever, soon the courts will extend copyrights to last 200 years or more), regardless of its use, context, profits, or anything else. So a person doesn't need to register with any officials or sue in court to keep their copyrights (but most do so they can get "reparations" or "royalties" i.e. loads and loads of money)... yet you do for patents and trademarks, hence this war between Macky and Adobe. And the people commenting here are right; the only ones to lose out will be the customers, who will no longer be able to use configurable palettes in MM products, and will be stuck with a less-powerful Illustrator.

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