WorldCAD Access

It's Come to This: ITC Sues Longest-standing Member

I am saddened to report that the IntelliCAD Technology Consortium last week filed a complaint against CADopia alleging breach of contract and trademark infringement, unfair competition, and deceptive trade practices.

CADopia didn't pay ITC membership dues of $47,248.76 in 2008 and 2009, and so should have halted using IntelliCAD trademarks, and recalled all ITC-branded products from distributors. 

CADopia did not make the payment and failed to respond to warning letters. The software firm's Website, however, continues to sell its products and use the IntelliCAD trademark.

Does CADopia even exist anymore? The most recent press release is from November, 2006. The "new" CADopia v8 being promoted on the site is based on IntelliCAD v6.4, released in August 2007.

I don't expect the ITC to win any damages from this law suit, not even attorneys' fees.

History of CADopia

This appears to be the sad ending for the IntelliCAD pioneer. Surya Sarda was one of the programmers on the original "IntelliCADD" product, and the very first to launch a CAD program based on the newly-liberated-from-Visio IntelliCAD source code in 1999.

He was an ITC board member between 2001 and 2007, the ITC president from 2001 to 2004, and ITC's development manager between 2002 and 2004.

[Disclosure: I had a commercial relationship with Mr Sarda, in customizing some of my IntelliCAD ebooks for CADopia.]

Reed Sues McGraw-Hill Over Industrial Espionage

Reed Construction Data is suing McGraw-Hill Construction Dodge for accessing trade secret information by using fake companies posing as RCD customers.

The complaint charges that Dodge hired consultants to subscribe to RCD's confidential data under the cover of fake names and companies. Dodge then allegedly manipulated the information to create misleading comparisons between Dodge's and RCD’s products and services in an effort to mislead the marketplace.

Reed is mad enough to throw the whole book at McGraw:

• Fraud.
• Misappropriation of trade secrets.
• Misappropriation of confidential information.
• Unfair competition.
• Tortious interference with prospective economic advantage.
• Violation of New York's general business law. 
• Violation of the RICO Act.
• RICO conspiracy.
• Monopolization.
• Unjust enrichment.
• Attempted monopolization.

Reed is upset enough to hire a pr firm to publicize the misdeeds of its competitor, and even set up a Web site for voyeurs to monitor the suit's progress through the courts: www.reedconstructiondata.com/mhcdodgesuit

Does CAD Face Antitrust Under Obama?

This week we saw the US government launch an(other) investigation against IBM, and now the AP's Joelle Tessler writes in Tech industry braces for more antitrust scrutiny:

Christine Varney, the head of the [Justice] department's antitrust division, vowed in a May speech that her office will take a tough look at potential abuses of market power across some of the nation's biggest industries, including high tech and telecom.

There is rough and tough competition in CAD's mature marketplace, and sometimes I hear of tactics that gives me pause. A puzzler for me is jurisdiction. The largest CAD vendor is American; the next two are half-American, with head offices located overseas. 

But it's up to lawyer specialists to determine if American law has been broken. A co-chair of the antitrust practice group at Dewey LeBoeuf says: 

Antitrust enforcers tend to look at companies with the most significant market share. Wherever you have market power, there are just more possibilities for anticompetitive issues.

Tech has had a "free ride" for eight years, says the head of Computer and Communications Industry Association:

The last administration was not focused on competition, but with the Obama administration there is a recognition that overconcentration in the economy can have unhealthy consequences.

Obvious non-CAD targets include Google, Intel, and Microsoft. Autodesk was investigated in 1998, and was found innocent of abusing market share.

Vernor Wins; Customers Win

A judge decided today that Tim Vernor did not contravene the USA Copyright Act, when he resold AutoCAD software he apparently picked up at garage sales. The judge told Autodesk to back off harassing him.

From Owen Wengerd's CAD/court:

"The court declares that Plaintiff's [Vernor's] sales of Defendant's [Autodesk's] copyrighted AutoCAD software do not violate the Copyright Act to the extent Plaintiff [Vernor] acquired them in the manner described in the order. Defendant [Autodesk] is hereby enjoined from asserting its rights under the Copyright Act as a basis for preventing or otherwise hindering Plaintiff's [Vernor] sales of AutoCAD software."

(The back story: With the assistance of the EFF Public Citizen, Vernor had taken on Autodesk, to stop the billionaire corporation interfering with his used AutoCAD sales on eBay. Autodesk had gotten eBay to block Vernor's sales.)

The court agrees that customers can resell software like a book, but in this one specific situation (as I understand it): that you buy the software and then resell it, without reading the license agreement -- which is what Vernor had done. (He is not a CAD user, but a guy who makes an income from finding used software and then reselling it.)

Vernor (and me) figure software should be no different than any other consumer good: buy it, use it, resell it, or toss it. Software companies blanche at the thought of a second-hand software market, which would cut into their sales.

(The most extreme license terms require you to physically return the discs to the software vendor after a certain number of years!)

I am guessing this will go to another level of court, as Autodesk desperately tries to keep its finger in the dike on behalf of all large software corporations against the freeing up of the marketplace. Software resales may become inevitable, however, given today's popularity of reselling used software games, and selling used computers with Windows licenses glued on.

Autodesk's Shut-Down-the-ODA Campaign Continues, Unabated

In legal papers filed on Tuesday, the Open Design Alliance asks the court in Autodesk vs SolidWorks to force Autodesk to stop being a bully.

I am of the opinion that Autodesk's sole interest in this series of legal actions in the courts and US Trademark Office is to shut down the ODA through draining legal action. In court papers, however, the ODA has a different take on why the biggest CAD software company in the history of the world is spending so much on lawyers:

Autodesk apparently intends to monopolize the DWG format as a proprietary trademark, and thus would require anyone who wants to access a .DWG file to either use its AutoCAD product or otherwise obtain a license from Autodesk."

Autodesk Seems to Not Want to Settle

Monopolizing DWG is one way; shutting down the ODA through legal exhaustion is another. Here is a piece of evidence for my hypothesis:

On Friday, August 28, 2009, counsel for Autodesk and counsel for the ODA conferred by telephone and resolved almost all of the outstanding issues. [Only reimbursement of ODA's costs was still outstanding.] The call ended with the ODA’s counsel offering a suggested resolution to bridge the remaining issues.

Autodesk’s counsel stated that she would take the offer back to her client to confer and reply. Instead of responding as promised, Autodesk, without warning, or conferring with the ODA, filed its Motion to Compel the following business day.

In its latest volley against the ODA, Lewis and Roca (Autodesk's outside legal firm) demands the following:

• That the ODA produce 45,000 documents in one week.
• That the ODA president sit in a deposition for a third time on the same topics.

In return, Autodesk offers to:

• Refuse to narrow the scope of the documents.
• Refuse to narrow the scope of deposition sought in a significant matter.
• Refuse to compensate the ODA for costs incurred.

Notes the document: "Such costs might be small and trivial to Autodesk, a multi-billion dollar corporation, but they are substantial for a three-person-staffed nonprofit corporation like the ODA."

Several pages of the new legal papers describe Autodesk's many fruitless attempts over many years to get the generic .dwg file extension exclusively for their own. That is followed by tables and tables showing the similarity between Autodesk's previous and current demands for information.

Autodesk's Violations

The 28-page document ends with a list of legal moves that Autodesk allegedly violated:

FRCP 45(c)(2)(B)(i): Autodesk failed to give notice that it was filing a motion.
FRCP 45(c)(1): Autodesk placed an undue burden on the ODA.
FRCP 45(c)(3): Autodesk placed an undue burden on a non-party (the lawsuit is against SolidWorks, not the ODA).
FRCP 45(c)(3)(A)(i): Autodesk failed to give sufficient time for the ODA to respond.

Surfware vs. Celeritive Lawsuit Ends Early

Surfware decided to sue Celeritive over patent #7,451,013 involving engagement milling, which "allows 50% faster machining of titanium and other exotic materials by controlling engagement and tool load with a constant feed rate to significantly increase tool life."

Celeritive first countersued, and then blinked, and the two settled before going to court. Surfware agreed to license Celeritive some -- but not all -- of its technology. Here is how the two announced the agreement:

Surfware: Announcement: Surfware vs. Celeritive Lawsuit is Settled

Celeritive: Surfware, Inc. and Celeritive Technologies have settled the claims and
counterclaims made against each other

Autodesk Loves Lawyers

Even as Autodesk finds it has insufficient funds and chooses to lay off hundreds of employees, it seems to not be lacking for lawyer fees. From a press release posted today by the Open Design Alliance:

The Open Design Alliance was subpoenaed by Autodesk, Inc. last month for deposition in the civil case Autodesk filed against SolidWorks Corporation for, among other things, trademark infringement, including use of the term DWG in product names. 

Arnold van der Weide, President of the ODA, stated, “I am disappointed that the ODA has once again been summoned to deposition. It puts an unnecessary burden on the Open Design Alliance, especially since lawyers at Autodesk are asking for the same information they asked for before during their petition for cancellation of the ODA’s OpenDWG trademark.”

Source.

Yawn: Yet Another Autodesk Lawsuit

This time its Autodesk Canada doing the suing, claiming that the user interface of Assimilate's Scratch post-production film editing software is too similar to that of Cyborg. Says Assimilate:

Although Autodesk does not market or sell the Cyborg product, Autodesk claims that it purchased the rights to Cyborg in 2002 from the liquidation sale of 5D Solutions.

Wow: Suing somebody for something that looks like something nobody sees. 

It turns out that Scratch's UI was not particularly "stolen" from Cyborg, because the two have the same father: after 5D went bust, its owner started again from scratch (pardon the pun). The technology, however, is different: Cyborg is (older) node-based while Scratch is (newer) pipline-based.

You can read Assimilate's statement here, as well as the comments from Scratch supporters. The suit was filed last October in the foreign country of United States; court documents link.

Disinterest Rules: Yares vs. ODA

Four blogs wrote up the proposal by Evan Yares for a class action law suit against the Open Design Alliance, and not a single comment.

Blog writers find it fascinating; blog readers don't care.

Bad Guy? Class Action Proposed Against ODA

The Open Design Alliance changed the terms of Associate Membership from free to $100 yearly. Former ODA president Evan Yares figures that's wrong, because associate membership agreements were in-perpetuity.

(Associate Members download some -- not all -- ODA libraries for personal use at no cost.)

By his estimate, some 3,000 associate members are being asked to pay up within 30 days or lose membership -- against the terms of the license they originally agreed to. Including, Mr Yares notes, Autodesk apparently.

He details his case and his emails in a lengthy posting at his Evan on Engineering Software blog: Open Design Alliance: What a Mess. And he's proposing that the three thousand launch a class-action suit in Washington State to stop the ODA from unilaterally changing the agreement.