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Autodesk Suing to Keep Format Closed
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Dec 20, 2006 12:17 PM
from the haven't-we-been-through-this-before dept.
from the haven't-we-been-through-this-before dept.
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."
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Trademark, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
It further says this is granted under the Lanham Act, which is "found in Title 15 of the U.S. Code and contains the federal statutes governing trademark law in the United States. "
My (limited) search of the 41 sections of the Lanham Act finds no reference to any technological protections, and everything I can find points to other sections of federal law which deal directly with patent and/or copyright. Anyone running some legal codecs care to explain how a trademark grants protection for code and technology?
Re:Trademark, what? (Score:5, Informative)
The Lanham Act is the federal trademark code. What Autodesk is trying to argue is that anyone 'faking' their 'TrustedDWG' technology is violating their trademark. The best analogy I can think of is GM saying you can only put 'genuine GM' parts in their cars. Of course, it is a lot more complex than that here, and judges aren't known for their technological savvy. The keystone of trademark law, though, is how likely something is to confuse the consumer. In other words, for Autodesk to win they will have to show that consumers are likely to confuse this imitation 'TrustedDWG' for the real thing; i.e., that since it's a .dwg file, it must have been made/come from Autodesk.
Not sure what I think of their chances. On the one hand, AutoCAD is so ubiquitous that anyone that has any need for CAD probably automatically associates .dwg files with AutoCAD. On the other hand, well . . . who gives a shit? It'd be like MS claiming trademark in .doc files -- sure, everyone knows .doc files = Word, but it's something that's below the radar. It's not like you go into a store to buy a .doc or .dwg file, and might be confused about it's source.
It's been a while since I've looked at the Lanham Act, but I think Autodesk would have to prove some sort of damage, even if they were able to show likelihood of confusion.
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Re:Trademark, what? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure either, and IANAL, but if I wanted to contest this I would probably cite Sega v. Accolade [eidolons-inn.net] (Scroll down, copied text appears here:
Most of us know how that turned out - Accolade eventually won the right to continue to distribute their game cartridges. Sega went on to do the same kind of crap on the Dreamcast, but they weren't able to prevent clever programmers from putting a notice on the same screen that came up saying "licensed by sega" that says "no, it isn't, but this message has to be here".
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Re:Trademark, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Supposedly somewhere in the old IBM BIOS ROMs, there's a "Copyright 1981 IBM." Some programs, like IBM's, looked for this and would not run if it wasn't there. Now the cloners, of course, could not put this in. Their solution: Go four bytes in front of it and add "NOT ".
I don't know if it's true or just an urban legend, but it's a funny concept.
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Similarly in logitech (Score:5, Informative)
Logitech's DOS mouse driver MOUSE.COM (dumped from an actual copy I've here) :
Also mentioned here by other
The Dreamcast boot code checks and runs only games that display "PRODUCED BY OR UNDER LICENSE FROM SEGA" in their Loader.
Opensource environment like KallistiOS [allusion.net] feature a Loader that displays the required string on-sreen, and then adds an explanation that in fact, it's not under Sega's License, but that the string is required to the game to boot.
So the trick isn't urban legend and is genuinly used to circumvent such string checks, although I don't know if the trick was also used by PC BIOS cloners [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Warning dialogs and more info. (Score:5, Insightful)
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/ [typepad.com]
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Key Difference (Score:5, Interesting)
This case is far different, because no one is breaking into a locked box, What they are doing is creating a new box, which happens to use the same key.
Take the key to your office. You could ask a locksmith to make a lock to fit your office Key - say to lock your bicycle and save the chaos of a thousand keys.
You are not breaking into someone else's locked box.
No on the other hand, if you do not own a key to this office, and you jam a screwdriver into the lock - that is a very different matter.
The question is - do people have the right to make a lock so it works with a pre-existing key. The answer from the court had better be - apsofreakenlutely. The person who owns the information in an autocad file are not autodesk, but the engineer who designed the building, and that engineer has the unequivocal right to use their data anyway they choose, including opening it into a different program. The relinquishment of ownership of a significantly valuable work such as that would surely require more than a contract, it would require meaningful compensation. Unless Autodesk has paid for the services rendered by the author of a file, it has no argument to constrain the use of that document.
The Autodesk format (DWG etc ) is a piece of crap anyway, and it would appear the company is the devil incarnate.
AIK
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Re:Trademark, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Trademark protection != Denial of interoperability (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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This isn't about .DWG format itself (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Industry Standard? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Industry Standard? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Industry Standard? (Score:5, Informative)
it isn't the leader in the arena of 3D design.
AutoCAD is _not_ the standard for 3D design. I'm not sure it ever was...
Autodesk competes in that arena with their Inventor product - but I don't think
that they are anywhere near the market leader. It's a pretty fragmented market.
However, I believe the AutoCAD _is_ the standard for 2D architectural drawing.
This is the arena where architects (or, rather, the draftsman working for an architect)
draw the 2D drawings. Buildings, landscapes, etc.
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Re:Industry Standard? (Score:5, Informative)
No, you don't. Most major CAD systems will import DWG files since they have paid the licensing fees to AutoDesk to include a utility to perform the import. It isn't always pretty, but the functionality exists.
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Re:Industry Standard? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you understand that the issue here is that people shouldn't have to pay royalties to read a file format?
Personally, I think DWG should go exactly the way of MS Office's formats: banned from government use because they're proprietary!
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Nice Squat on Baltic Avenue You Have There. (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is, you'd best be sure your monopoly is rock solid before attempting such a move, lest it bite you in the ass when your users find their workflow has a new kink in it.
Interoperability is cool. All the happening kids are doing it. Software mongers who fail to understand this are doomed to wither and die, or rule us with a taste of rising bile in our throats (I'm looking at you, MS Office). Grudging and bitter acceptance is not equal to brand loyalty.
We've been phasing AutoCAD out of our shop here because it won't play nice with others. I doubt we're the only ones.
Fighting the Last War--Muskets are Out (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a new millenium and 2D is not gone, but it is dying fast. Somehow they, Autodesk, missed the point that we live and think in a 3D world.
SolidWorks.com has about 500,000 users of their mid-range software and has trounced AutoDesk's various offerings, so AD is just trying to protect what little it has left in 2D. What a pity.
By all rights, AD should have been a leader in low-mid 3D CAD, but they squandered their efforts, not the least of which involve cumbersome user interfaces. I think they needed someone like Andy Hertzfeld and others from Apple's early days to make their CAD interfaces far easier to learn and use.
Good bye AD. I use us no more.
Now History. Part of the lore.
More like "gotcha last" (Score:5, Informative)
All Autodesk had to do was join the Open Design Alliance, and they could use the ODA libraries without restriction. Instead, they filed suit.
Don't forget to read The Autodesk File [fourmilab.ch] for more insights into how the once-revered company became just another soulless money hole.
Not the standard anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Increasingly Irrelevant Anyway (Score:5, Informative)
AutoCAD is a 2D drawing tool with functions optimized for the production of scale drawings. It is an extension of the old T-Square And Pencil technique into the computer; a sort of Adobe Illustrator tuned to drafting.
It is very, very good at this, and I found it (given that I had a little old skool drafting experience) fairly easy to adapt to.
But at its core, you're still projecting 3D objects into 2D or psudo 3D (orthometric projections) using the draftsman's brain as the projection device.
Enter Solidworks.
Solidworks is a parametric 3D modeling package. You create the object in 3D, and then the software generates your 2D drawings from it. No more construction lines. No more mismatched views.
There have been 3D modelers before (VariCAD for Linux isn't bad) but Solidworks takes it a step farther - it remembers every step in the construction of an object, and every step is tunable. Where past 3D modelers used Boolean operations to construct their shapes - but then the shape was fixed - Solidworks allows you to change the parameters of every operation at any time. Punch a hole through an object, but then discover it is the wrong size? No problem - just select the hole in the object's construction tree, and change its size.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
It has revolutionized mechanical drawing, to the point where it is inconceivable that I'd ever use AutoCAD ever again. Solidworks is one of the few software packages I've ever used that just left me dumbfounded in amazement at how powerful, easy, and intuitive it is.
And no, I don't work for them.
DG
This might be a good test case (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This might be a good test case (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Ummmm how about NO? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:It's not about reverse engineering. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Format War (Score:5, Informative)
Enter the DMCA, stage right-wing. AutoDESK added basic encryption to the file format starting with AutoCAD 2004. Now, instead of just reverse engineering the protocol, you would have to decrypt it as well. This is now, in the U.S., against the law except for certain conditions. This one, interoperability, may well be one of the conditions, but that will be up to a judge.
And file formats are THE key. This is why Microsoft doesn't provide the full specs on
"Function A is under a different menu in OOo Writer than MS Word" and "This function doesn't seem to exist in OOo Calc" are trivial compared to "I can't read this document" and "My formulas don't work any more".
Lock those customers in tight enough, and they'll not only put up with getting screwed, they'll fight for your right to screw them as hard as you want.
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