Macromedia Sues Adobe, Claims Photoshop Infringes Patent 190
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. :)
Good patents,defensive patents, and other nonsense (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Just another patent dispute. (Score:2, Informative)
Don't hate Adobe for what they didn't do (KIllustrator), hate them for what they did do (Dmitry)
- The universe is held together with duct tape and karma. What goes around, comes around, and gets taped to your forehead
"Tabbed palette" is probably at the core of this (Score:3, Informative)
Here are some links from Aug 2000:
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0008/10.ado
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/press
In any case, it looks like Macromedia isn't going to let up too easily on trying to drive Adobe under.
The tiniest bit of detective work (Score:5, Informative)
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...
old hat between these two... (Score:3, Informative)
This is old news for these two companies...
They have been sueing and counter-sueing for quite a while, i.e.:
And so on...
Some good info:
www.cptech.com [cptech.org] has some good info and links on the two sueing and counter-sueing.
macweek.com [macworld.com] seems to indicate the the whole thing is over the fact that 'that Adobe Premiere violates two patents related to visual display and editing of soundforms. Macromedia also contended that Adobe's patents in the case are invalid and thus unenforceable.'
This seems to be a defense patent battle, in that both sides are trying to invalidate the other sides patents...
A few more links...
www.creativemac.com [creativemac.com] says 'Macromedia Fires Back at Adobe'
And an editorial by WebDeveloper.com [webdeveloper.com]... and I quote:
Ultimately, I would say this a standard battle of patents. Such things have taken place many a time, this time it just happens to involve software patents, and thus happens upon the radar of geeks and slashdot...
Re:Good patents,defensive patents, and other nonse (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:All I can say is... (Score:3, Informative)
I would disagree -- i think the implementation of non-linear history and transformation layers count as pretty big deals, along with "automate" and 16-bit image channel improvements.
The vastly improved type handling in the past few years is a night and day change from the 4.x era. Channel mixing is a great tool that simplified a frequently used CHOP technique. The lasso/pen tools have gone through serious supercharging. And thats forgetting about the history brush, or the significant improvements to color handling (spot colors for example). The vector tools in general have seen a big improvement, though I can tell they're nervous about incorporating too much of AI in there.
And while the web features may not be ones you use, that's where a lot of the development is taking place -- dynamic slicing, non-uniform image compression, etc.
GIMP, patents, and five-click shopping (Score:3, Informative)
The capacity and useability of GIMP - particularly with regards to fonts, anti-aliasing
Apple has patented the hinting mechanisms in TrueType.
color control (emphasis), et. al., is severly lacking.
Probably because Apple, Adobe, and Pantone own broad patents in many jurisdictions on all known feasible methods of color correction that produce acceptable results (i.e. better than C,M,Y = 1.0 - R,G,B; K = min(C,M,Y); C,M,Y -= K).
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.
Which explains the lack of a scripting language in Photoshop. GIMP, on the other hand, supports Scheme and Perl scripting and C and C++ filters.
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 you consider "results" to include "broad patents on color correction that keep everybody else from competing in the prepress market," I agree.
If Adobe and Macromedia's killer apps could be "easily replicated" by OSS, then why haven't they been?
Because developers want users in the United States to be able to use their software legally.
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.
Programs don't make bad art; bad artists make bad art. A license saying that "bad artists may not use this program and thereby tarnish the image of the program" would look ridiculous to me.
"Orator 24 point/ Soft Light / desaturate/ color balance / variations (blue, two iterations)"
Nearly the same steps in GIMP. I have used Gaussian Blur then Curves to do some nice neon effects.
Photoshop is worth the price tag.
Perhaps for you. I don't use the prepress features (I do mostly game and web graphics), so I see a stripped-down version of Photoshop called Photoshop Elements as more worth the price tag.
When the GIMP (or comprable app) can use the photshop 5 keyboard shortcuts
You can change any GIMP shortcut by right-clicking an image to open the menu, hovering over a menu item, and pressing the key you want to use to activate the menu item. Most GTK+ apps work the same way.
get color right
Again, if this were implemented, GIMP would not be available in the United States of America or any other jurisdiction where somebody has a patent on using LUT-interpolated vector transformation for color correction.
support a gazillion fonts
GIMP supports as many fonts as you have installed on your system. I can see all my TrueType fonts from my copy of GIMP 1.2 for Windows.
read PSD files
Do you also expect Photoshop to read XCF files? Find me the spec for PSD files, and I'll send it to the GIMP people to implement.
launch in under ten seconds
On what kind of computer? Photoshop 5 takes over a minute to launch on my old 75 MHz Mac.
The day that OSS can produce a useable graphics app - that can be installed in less than five clicks without resorting to a terminal
Depends on how you have your window manager and desktop environment set up. I'll use Windows 98 Explorer for example, as that's what most popular *n?x desktops try to emulate, adding one step whenever the state of a mouse button changes from UP to DOWN. I'll also assume you turned the annoying CD-ROM Autorun feature off.
Note that instead of steps 1-4, I simply type F:\ into any open Explorer window.
Look for a GIF checkbox. Fail to find it because of Unisys's discriminatory licensing policies. Give up.
And you still haven't calibrated your display resolution. Because many poorly-written but popular Windows applications will not run correctly if the display resolution is set to anything but 96 dpi, many graphics applications (including GIMP) include their own settings for resolution.
Re:It's probably over... (Score:2, Informative)
For about 1/4th. the price, you can buy Paint Shop Pro 7 and do anything you'll probably ever need - sometimes more easily than in Photoshop.
(EG. Have you ever tried to load in 2 different JPG photos and merge them so they're the left side/right side of one JPG photo? Comes in real handy for things like eBay photos, where you get charged for photos beyond the 1st. free one you post with an advertisement. Anyway, in Photoshop, it's a pretty complex process. I sure couldn't figure it out intuitively. In Paint Shop Pro, you just drag the photos into a new window, and voila!)