Macromedia Wins Round Two over Adobe

As I wrote in an earlier blog entry, the Adobe victory in a lawsuit earlier this week was a non-event. On May 10,2002, Macromedia won its countersuit against Adobe.


Macromedia was awarded $4.9M in damages, more than the $2.8M Adobe was awarded earlier in the week. The two companies will now work out a cross-licensing deal and everyone will stay on their side of the masking tape dividing the couch.


So who's the bad-guy in all this? It depends. If you believe that software patents are evil, you could say that Adobe is the bad guy for crying foul when Macromedia imitated their interface. If you believe software patents are good, then there is no good-guy or bad-guy, although Rob Burgess (Macromedia's CEO) would have you believe the customers lost (they didn't).


Point is, software patents are usually used defensively, not to stifle innovation but to prevent your own innovation from being stifled. IOW, if I infringe on your patent, it is okay as long as I have a patent portfolio with which to play the game. If I don't have a patent portfolio, I'm probably underneath the radar of companies like Adobe and Macromedia, as long as I don't get too uppity.


So without debating the good/evil of software patents, the system continues to approximate a sane if not rational world. The lawsuit had no impact beyond enriching some lawyers. I told you so.