Autodesk Suing to Keep Format Closed

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."

Say it ain't so

[aapold]

This building you guys got us workin on here, ain't designed by no trusted autodesk product? You can't trust those other designed projects, sometimes things just go wrong on them, the crane pulls something too far and then BOOM! So its like this, we don't move one finger unless it was designed by 100% genuine autodesk products.

Re:Who cares? AutoCAD is a toy for students

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

but I believe it's big throughout at least the rest of Scandinavia

Now I can see why AutoCAD software is being protected in this way. Once those US Haxors pwn the DWG format, Ikea's design files are sitting ducks.

Re:Trademark, what?

[GIL_Dude]

No. Not at all. Just write a greasemonkey script to change the color of the leaves to whatever you want.

The way I heard it (so to speak)

[KlaymenDK]

"If a man says something in the forest, and his wife doesn't hear it, is he still wrong?"