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Macromedia Sues Adobe, Claims Photoshop Infringes Patent
jmorse writes: "According to this article at sfgate.com, Macromedia is suing Adobe for patent infringement, claiming that Adobe's Photoshop and GoLive products violate a patent they filed in 1998. The article is a little short on details, so I'm wondering if there are other sources with more on this patent." Adobe and Macromedia have been skirmishing and counter-skirmishing over patents for some time now. The AP article doesn't say which patent Adobe is supposed to be violating this time, so just pick any random thing that Photoshop does that Macromedia might have patented and express outrage about it. :)
I know that good/great patents are extremely important. There are probabally under 100 of these filled a year. Now I know that I personally filed about 12 last year, not a single one was what I would call a good ground breaking patent, they were all defensive patents...
I gained a friend in a the large company that I worked for legal dept... Basically the story went like this, when we are sued we look at their portfolio of patents, then look at our portfolio of patents that we have that might cause their products to infringe... Which ever pile is taller gets paid royalties by the other company. That is a defensive patent
Now lawyers have to be VERY careful not to use what are really defensive patents and go out looking for royalties, it makes everyone look bad.
Personally, I think Macromedia can f*ck off, they write terrible software with horrible interfaces that produce terrible results 99.9% of the time!
Maybe that's what their patent is. Too bad for them that Windows will be used as prior art in the trial.
All I can say is that this is yet more proof that software patents are just a bad idea. Let's see; Photoshop has been around since the Dawn of Time by computer standards, and somehow it violates a Macromedia patent filed just 3 years ago. I'm using Photoshop 6 now, and as far as I can see, it does the same thing every other version has done, only with a few more mostly-useless bells and whistles. I bet the patent is either about some tiny little insignificant nitpicking function I'd never even notice, or is about something big and obvious that's been in editing utils since the Amiga or C64 days and should have never been awarded a patent.
Either way, every software patent I've ever seen covers something silly and obvious that shouldn't be patentable based on the fact that it's so obvious and isn't a real advancement at all. The real-world equivalent to most such patents would be like trying to patent a new Lego brick because you made it two rows longer. Uh-huh. Ingenious.
Take the infamous 1-click patent for example. All it is is a fairly obvious way to make shopping on line just like shopping in real life at a store where you have an account or tab. Hand the clerk at the store your stuff with your ID or account number, order is rung up, store already has billing information, customer leaves with product. Amazon's 1-click patent does the same thing, only on-line. Patentable my ass. Anything simple and obvious shouldn't be patentable.
I bet whatever this new Adobe/Macromedia fight is about, it's over something that should never have been patentable in the first place.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
This is [ridiculous|stupid|ludicrous|lame]! How can Macromedia patent ______? I was doing _____ on my [Z80|8086|Altair] in the [1970s|1980s]. It's really [easy|trivial|fast] to implement. I could write it right now in [Perl|C|Python|Java|INTERCAL]! The USPTO needs to gain some [sense|accountability|knowledgeable employees (like me)]. Still, Adobe [deserves|asked for|needs] a taste of their own medicine! I can't be too upset about them getting sued. It's [kharma|fate|divine intervention].
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
...this is why software patents are bad juju.
Don't even get me started on Adobe's 'Rights Management' crap.
My company has spent a little over $1300 on Adobe products. Of course, I could never justify spending this much personally for what many consider to be 'essential' tools for web design and publishing. A great deal of this. I imagine that a great deal of this goes to fund Adobe's legal departement and executive management layer. We know for a fact that that all three of these flagship products could be replicated by OSS programmers with not a lot of difficulty. It would be a large project, but most of that art functionality is already in GIMP. The rest is spread around a few other art and publishing tools.
That's right. Adobe's hideously inflated prices go to support their vast corporate empire, and *not* to better their products. They could be doing better, but they're not.
Macromedia is no better, having done their best to replace Adobe in the position of being an unofficial 'industry standard' when it comes to web design. If they did this with quality products, it would be one thing, but they try to do it with lawsuits, legal gimmicks, and customer abuse. Flash could be so much bigger than it is now if it were an open standard. Most of the web developers I know would vastly prefer to work with Flash rather than crank out lameo HTML and CSS.
For shame!
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
My luck I spelled 'cotton gin' wrong. ;>
While I mostly agree with what you said, sometimes really obvious ideas are important (and not quite so obvious). The cotton gin is a great example- a simple device with a very basic purpose that should be very obvious, yet it didnt pop in anyone's head as early as we think it could have in hindsight. This bad boy invention ultimately helped bring some pretty big changes in the US.
But the cotton gin made it's inventer jack. The guy who make the first tv also made jack from his invention. Kind of makes you wonder.
Both inventions were made after patents were made available in the US, but the inventers both made zip. That also kind of makes you wonder.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Since tech details are a bit sparse, I'm not quite sure which patent this is or whether it is frivilous, but quite frankly, I like seeing someone (try to) take a bite out of the big guy... And Adobe is the Microsoft of the digital image world.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes - Juvenal
Isn't that almost exactly what Adobe were suing Macromedia over? Has the US Patent Office granted both of them almost exactly the same patent?
This could get interesting...
Basically the story went like this, when we are sued we look at their portfolio of patents, then look at our portfolio of patents that we have that might cause their products to infringe... Which ever pile is taller gets paid royalties by the other company. That is a defensive patent.
That is one of the stupidest things I've ever read, and makes me all the more happy I purchased the Alan Cox software patents shirt. When a measure meant to protect inventors becomes a way for two companies to hold silly legal dicksize contests, it's a sign the system is broken and needs fixing, or scrapping, or something. Anything to halt the flood of crap that flows through the USPTO... and the Slashdot front page.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Read this completely before you mod it as flamebait.
Most of the web developers I know consider Flash to be a standards-breaking, improperly used piece of ass. But then, most of the web devs I know are rabid about making damned good and sure that the lowest common denominator can use their site. On a modem.
I'm a professional graphics designer. I live in photoshop. The GIMP - the closest thing that OSS has to a graphics app - is a huge steaming pile of poo compared to the ease of use, power, stability (on a Mac, no less!), and most importantly, USEABILITY of Photoshop (version 5, don't get me started on 6). The GIMP is "almost photoshop", everyone says. We (the graphics community) can NOT use "almost". What we NEED is "Better Than Photoshop".
I've seen a lot of GIMP art. I've seen a lot of Photoshop art. The capacity and useability of GIMP - particularly with regards to fonts, anti-aliasing, color control (emphasis), et. al., is severly lacking. I've seen some mindblowing graphics produced with photoshop.... I have yet to see anything comprable with the GIMP.
A *PROFESSIONAL* graphic design app is a good deal more difficult to execute than a window manager, an office suite, or an IRC client. OSS is almost worthy with Nautilus, barely palatable with word processing, stinks horribly at fonts, has produced a number of excellent IRC clients, and a stable as well as surprisingly portable codebase.
The functionality that graphics people demand isn't there because graphics people don't code and coders don't do graphics (some think they can in both cases, but the evidence supports my statement). Hence, a graphics person that depends on Photoshop has about a 99.9% chance of not knowing a single line of code, and hence, not knowing how to build what he wants to use for free. The issue with OSS is that the "by geeks, for geeks" mentality is simply incapable of producing an application of the quality and caliber of Photoshop- it takes a corporation like Adobe with the money and management to ram the coders and the artists together to get the results necessary to produce a useable application.
If Adobe and Macromedia's killer apps could be "easily replicated" by OSS, then why haven't they been? I don't know a SINGLE graphic designer that works in Linux. I know two that work in Windows. The rest use MacOS- and of the MacOS users, ONE uses OS X , and she runs her apps in Classic. NONE use or recommed the GIMP. Point of fact, it is a common conclusion within the Pittsburgh professional graphics community that the GIMP is very good at making very bad art. Likely due to the fact that "configue / make / make install" and "Orator 24 point/ Soft Light / desaturate/ color balance / variations (blue, two iterations)" involve two completely different sides of the brain.
Photoshop is worth the price tag. It is the ONLY graphics app out there that can do what professionals demand- easily, smoothly, and in a stable fashion (on a Mac- hasn't crashed on me once, minus poorly coded third party plugins). Compared to the price points of comprable video compositing and editing software, Photoshop is CHEAP.
When the GIMP (or comprable app) can use the photshop 5 keyboard shortcuts (and actually DO with equal effectiveness what those shortcuts key to), get color right, support a gazillion fonts, do alpha channels and selections on the flip of a click, read PSD files, launch in under ten seconds, dynamically allocate swap disks (something photoshop doesn't do), AND competently handle a 11x17 @ 600 DPI image with 45 pixel layers and 30 type layers... AND manage five gigs of swap disk without dumping core.... then I'll think about actually seriously using it to do some work.
The day that OSS can produce a useable graphics app - that can be installed in less than five clicks without resorting to a terminal - is the day I cease dual booting.
That day is nowhere near. We'll see another thousand or so IRC clients on sourceforge before we see a Better Than Windows WM, let alone a Better Than Photoshop graphics app.
To: Litigating Patent Holders
From: B.Franklin, Geo. Read, Jaco. Broom et. al.
Dear Sir,
We understand that you are planning to embark on certain legislation that will require the invocation of section eight of the document known as "The Constitution of the United States", specifically the clause that reads:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
We wish to remind you that this text is covered by modern copyright law. Should you find it necessary to refer to this clause, or any clause of the document, in your pleadings to the court we will require that you pay a reasonable and non-discriminatory fee. This fee will reflect the value of the document to the United States.
We trust that you will contact us before use or publication of our copyrighted material.
Kind Regards,
The Founding Fathers
Pshaw!
If you are using the product professionally -- that is, you plan to make money by using it as a tool -- you damn well should be ponying up the bucks for it.
You wouldn't steal a wrench set from Snap-On, you wouldn't steal a laser printer from Staples, and your sure as hell wouldn't be stealing your delivery van from the GM dealership.
So get some morals, and *DON'T* steal your professional software, either.
If you can't pay like the big boys, don't play like the big boys.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Even if we accept that a small handful of individuals were willing to innovate (accepting all the costs that come with it) without IP, this does not make IP any less necessary. Besides the fact that they can STILL invent even with the existence of IP, they are a minority. Most individuals need IP if they are to quit their jobs, spend their savings, and years of their life towards such pursuits. This is especially true of companies. There is no comparison between the amount of time/resources spent on innovation today versus that of before reasonably-strong IP protections.