Macromedia Bites Back Patent Style Versus Adobe

Arkan writes "After Adobe sued Macromedia over their patented tabbled widgets, Macromedia has made counterclaims against Adobe for using their patents on graphic element blending (5,467,443), and sound waveform editing (5,151,998 and 5,204,969)."

Re:And

shouldn't that be:

And Abodadobe to you all?

Re:Standard Business Practice

I agree that what Amazon patented was fine, as a DEFENSIVE patent. Amazon, however, used it OFFENSIVELY, suing Barns & Noble with no previous provocation.

That's why I'm boycotting Amazon. They weren't using it defensively.

Re:Stupid mods

I'm going to patent "I'm going to patent 'I'm going to patent something obvious" stupid comments on /.

Standard Business Practice

This shows very well why companies feel the need to get dubious patents.

"Our competitor has dubious patent A. We know it won't stand up in court and we'd like to do A. Now we can either 1) go ahead and do A, and fight the inevitable lawsuit--even though we'll win, this will cost us half a million dollars, minimum; or 2) we can get dubious patent B--then when they sue us for A, we sue them for B, and we settle out-of-court with a cross-licensing agreement."

This is why I don't blame Amazon for the one-click patent and won't boycott them (well, at least not for that)--that's just a symptom, and treating the symptom does not cure the disease. The root cause is that these patents are being granted in the first place.

Patent examiners are overworked (given an entirely unreasonable quota of patents they have to examine in a given time) and underpaid (making significantly less than their counterparts in industry). Of course, it doesn't help that the House of Representatives has voted to take away $295M in patent fees from the USPTO in FY2001. [ipo.org] The patent office should be quasi-privatized, like the post office, and allowed to keep whatever revenue it collects, and not have its budget gutted by congress for other programs.

The Cold War - IP style

This is like the cold war - it operates under the principle of mutually assured destruction. It's a bit sad that this is the best outcome under the state of software patents. Everyone sits on their missiles, but no one dares fire them because they are vulnerable to the enemy's missiles.

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No Software Patents in Europe PLEASE

This is a joke...period. The lax attitude of the U.S. Patent system is simply making a fortune for the lawyers! The shear concept of a software patent is absurd to me, perhaps if someone comes up with an entire new OS concept and wants to patent it...OK, but to patent an idea (such as one-click shopping) which is simply an application of common techniques (draw pixels to screen, use a cookie to save people typing) it is a farce.

We all know this is going to end up with either a settlement (lawyers win) or a long trial with one company taking the spoils (lawyers and one company wins, everyone else including the consumer loses due to less choice). Please keep my legal system free of this...please, please, please.....I think I better get marching and making T-Shirts

Re:Actual Comment

I'd actually like to see one buy out the other

Huh? How would having one single graphics company with 90% market share improve the products? When Adobe bought Aldus years ago we all thought the competition was going to be gone, luckily Macromedia managed to form itself out of the remains of the last small-time competitors in the graphics arena.

And the small print on the Aldus Freehand contract meant that Adobe didn't get to kill it like they'd planned to (and thus make Illustrator the only game in town), instead it reverted back to he developers and they went on to make the company we know and love today...

I'm an investigator. I followed a trail there.
Q.Tell me what the trail was.