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Autodesk Suing to Keep Format Closed
An anonymous reader writes "AutoCAD is by far the industry standard CAD tool for engineering drawings. When I was an engineering student it was on every computer in the college of engineering. Autodesk, the makers of the AutoCAD software, are attempting to quash an effort to reverse-engineer the proprietary binary format used by AutoCAD. Looking at the court order, their whole argument revolves around something called TrustedDWG that basically looks like a digital signature that verifies the file was created by an Autodesk product."
I've been using CAD programs (mainly CATIA) in my line of work for 10 years and haven't used AutoCAD once since college.
To me AutoCAD is like MS Paint compared to Photoshop. Maybe other places use it more but they sure don't use it much in aerospace CAD.
This doesn't even deserve publicity as there is no chance in hell that it's going to pass. Saying this will pass would be equivalent of Microsoft being able to quash OpenOffice.org and StarOffice's .doc import utilities.
Not in the mechanical engineering world. 3D packages like CATIA, Pro/Engineer and Unigraphics have long eclipsed it in the high-tech industry.
It's still usefull for making quick sketches etc.
For exporting drawings, dxf and especially pdf are much more important than the dwg format. For 3D data, IGES and STEP are most often used, especially because they're open standards.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
...more inovation please. AutoCAD is desperatley trying to hang onto past instead of leading the way with new inovative and intuitive CAD/3D software. They are no longer the only game in town. Sour grapes.
P226
When you can't compete in the open marketplace any longer, bring in the lawyers. I'd have to say this is a rather tacit admission that other CAD tools are catching up, and at much better prices.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Documentation/specifications, cable specifications/assemblies, overview drawings, interwiring diagrams, etc are depicted *so well* in a 3D parametric environment.
Sure, the modern set of design tools is far above AutoCAD, but there are quite a few situations where 2D modelling (which AutoCad excels at) is required.
The troll with karma.
Its not about confusing the customer in this case its about confusing the product. Lets my GM car has some sorta scanner on it that looks for the GM logo on every part installed. Of course in the car example you would be violating the trademark, but lets say I do some mumbo jumbo that makes it visually look to a human eye to not look anything like the GM logo. The fact that I'm using the GM logo at all is the issue then.. Is it legal to use another companies logo on your product even if the customer never sees that logo.
There was a recent discussion about this case, and the central point was NOT that the open source group was reverse engineering documents. It was about the open software's representation of itself as a "genuine" file using the AutoCAD name. The equivalent to a ODT file containing the terminology "Genuine Microsoft Word file, guaranteed to work". I have my issues with Autodesk, but they aren't necessarily the evil ones here.
Right, and that combined with their products only working with signed drawings means they're using this watermark as a ruse to try to monopolize their corner of the industry. This is basically what HP and Lexmark have tried to do, in which they've put code in their printers to check the manufacturer of the printhead. There's no reason for it technologically, it's only there for anticompetitive purposes. Same here, and the DMCA, as bad as it is, does say that using copyright as a ruse to prevent interoperability won't fly.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody's around to hear it, does it make a sound?
AutoDesk can certainly make a lot of noise about other people using their trademarks (if they are), and courts might listen with some interest.
But no way in hell can AutoDesk deny interoperability with their file formats. The precedents for interoperability as a protected activity are legion, spanning decades.
And if such claims were ever to be allowed even once, it would open Pandora's Box bigtime. The ramifications for all of human industry (not just computing) would be utterly immense, and catastrophic.
A huge amount of manufacturing rides piggyback on standards set by named brands, and really the relationship is symbiotic, although the big brands don't wish to acknowledge that. AutoDesk wishes to have a wholly tied customer base instead of being "merely" the leader in their manufacturing community. Such protectionism is very blinkered.
Hopefully their claims will be denied. If not, this could be very bad.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
It's a trick which has been tried many times before -- make your software not work with other software unless that other software contains your trademark. It usually doesn't work; courts have ruled that if you use your trademark in a functional way like that, you can't use trademark protection. Thus video cards which contained strings like "Some code expects 'IBM' here" (because the BIOS was checking for 'IBM' in a particular location), and similar nonsense.
Of course, throw enough lawyers at enough courts, particularly if your opponents aren't well-funded, and eventually you're likely to get your view accepted.
including but not limited to the Autodesk watermark and/or TrustedDWG code, without Autodesk's authorization,
.dwg files are clean from a copyright standpoint but the libraries have the ability to watermark or digitally sign the file--it is the signature in the resulting file generated by the library that is what Autodesk has taken issue with and they have pulled the lawyers out of their legal cesspool..uhhh..I mean department...to block the use of their signatures. Precedent doesn't allow them to block competitors from using the .dwg format itself.
- valve-cover-engine-bling that you can easily fit to your modest little DX for that pimpin' project.
.DWGs properly report what was used to create the file for support purposes anyways. After all, it has ALWAYS annoyed me that Microsoft has always had "mozilla" in their user agent string for all those years as its roots from the original spyglass software gradually withered and died.
That is the key statement in the claim. The code in the libraries that read and generate
The lawyers say that the watermarks and digital signatures are equivalent to a logo and that it is afforded protection under trademark law. The car analogy is pretty apt here: Imagine you want to rice-ify your 1989 Civic--you can get cheap third-pary knockoffs from any company--even those without any affiliation with Honda and those suppliers are legally allowed to make everything from spoilers-big-enough-to-use-as-the-tail-of-a-737 to neon-coloured-ignition-wires-and-matching-chromed
There is next to nothing Honda could do to prevent anyone from making and selling parts with matching bolt patterns, electrical connectors, etc. that interoperate with their cars. Believe me, automakers have tried a few times in the past without success to apply industrial design and patent law without success (and rightly so). What Honda CAN do (and probably should be able to do anyways) is prevent anyone from putting the Honda LOGO on their knockoff parts, or the phrase "Genuine Honda" or similar such markings as it misrepresents the source of the aftermarket parts and leads consumers into making wrong assumptions about the quality, source, warranty, etc. Which is why Honda really doesn't like those fake R stickers and has made some effort to stop them from being made. Of course, those fake Rs are easily produced and distributed do it is a really hard game of whack-a-mole, plus the fakers only have to alter the appearance of their own Rs slightly to get around trademark issues.
Anyways, because of this I don't really have an issue with Autodesk protecting their trademarks--though I think that a digital signature is brushing the line of what constitutes a trademark. If all that is at issue is the idea that a user can open a DWG and look at its properties and it has a "generated by AutoCAD xxxx" property in there when it was NOT generated by AutoCAD then what's the big deal? I think it is probably best that programs that do greate
Where I WOULD have a problem is if Autodesk were to use this signature to prevent interoperability, which would in my mind constitute abuse of a monopoly position. If...at any point and in any way...the absence of a "generated by genuine AutoCAD" signature prevented the file from being FULLY usable in AutoCAD or prevented "genuine autocad" files from being fully used by 3rd party software...then it ceases to be a trademark and becomes an access control mechanism that limits interoperability. Though I imagine then they'd LOVE to pull a DMCA trick....oh well...THAT is the point where Autodesk will have truly moved into the dark side.
This is THE major issue with allowing vendors to control the format of the data. If they don't want to publish a spec - fine (although I might be in favor of requiring that as well). But we cannot allow corps to tell us what we can do with OUR data, wherever it may originate. Once we create the data, it is ours, and we should be allowed to do format conversions, turn it into graffiti, or print it on paper and burn it in a bonfire.
This case should open the eyes of the judiciary and our legislators to see the mess they have created with the overlapping spider web of laws and legal precedent. It may even be time to go back to the drawing board with so called "Intellectual Property", to examine the underlying assumptions, and the negative effect it has had on the operation of a free market, and on consumers.
"On the other hand, well . . . who gives a shit?"
.dwg file that is not "trusted" into AutoCAD and a dialog pops up with warnings that say the file format is not "trusted, unsafe, etc".
Well, for one, the end users do, when they bring in a
Extending your GM analogy, say you install a non GM part in your GM car and get a blinking light on the dash to the effect of "Car may crash violently or explode through use on non-GM part." What are the results of that? The consumer is scared back into going to GM and GM only to buy the part.
Also, for more analysis of the case, go here:
http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/
The best analogy I can think of is GM saying you can only put 'genuine GM' parts in their cars.
Actually, a better analogy is GM making their oil filters in the shape of the GM logo. If you make an oil filter that fits in a GM, you have to make it in the shape of their logo, thereby violating their trademark.
If AutoCAD is crashing on bad input, that IS a bug. You should deal appropriately with bad data, and crashing isn't appropriate. This sounds like it's bad software engineering on Autodesk's part.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Apple Computer ran a number of other computer companies out of business in the 1980's for producing 'work-alike' Apple II copies. They weren't all 'copies' either. They were separately engineered and significantly different machines.
Apple also tried to sue to keep Microsoft from being allowed to sell Windows. Apple ran several other GUI vendors for the PC market out of business. In effect, Apple wiped out all of Microsoft's competition for Microsoft's eventual benefit.
Apple has always been a company festering with lawyers.
But now I've slid off-topic.
Actually, this suit is more analagous to GM saying that a third-party manufacturer can't stamp the phrase "Genuine GM" on their parts. I think most people would agree that it is reasonable for GM to have an interest in preventing that
Actually, this is more like saying that a third-party manufacturer can't stamp the words "compatible with General Motors cars" on the oil filters they want to sell. While GM might well have an interest in that (if, say, they themselves produce oil-filters), that's no reason to suppose that interest should be legally protected.
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.