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."

Trademark, what?

[Saxerman]

From the court papers, the restraining order is against "using or simulating Autodesk's TrustedDWG technology, including but not limited to the Autodesk watermark and/or TrustedDWG code, without Autodesk's authorization, from distributing DWGdirect libraries that use, incorporate or simulate Autodesk's TrustedDWG technology or that otherwise insert or mimic the unauthorized Autodesk watermark and/or TrustDWG code."

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?

Nice Squat on Baltic Avenue You Have There.

[CheeseburgerBrown]

This behavior is consistent with monopolistic thinking: we own the market, so let's raise the barrier to entry and/or companion-software diversity by making our product harder to use.

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.

Re:Industry Standard?

[TERdON]

CATIA isn't really suited for 2D CAD work (floorplans, early design sketches, electrical and other schemas, PCB construction etc). Neither is Solidworks, Pro/E or any of the other 3D CAD tools I've used. This is one of the areas where AutoCAD still shines (except of course, backward compability - with old files as well as old engineers!)

Fighting the Last War--Muskets are Out

[BoRegardless]

I've been using CAD since the Mid 80s (paper before), and AutoDesk got the jump just because they were the only early serious 2D CAD player when Microsoft hit the street with that, what was it, CP/M derivative OS, called DOS or something.

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.

Re:Industry Standard?

[Karzz1]

"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."

Hence the lawsuit. This is an effort by a company to lock its customers into its product artificially rather than creating a product that competes on actual features/support etc... If you use AutoCAD and decide to move to another software, you either have to redraw all of your current drawings or do without them. This is identical to MS reasoning with regard to file formats; the only difference being that MS has to be very careful about who they sue due to anti-trust issues whereas AutoDesk has no such worries.

If Torvalds Were In Prison...

[CheeseburgerBrown]

...millions of bearded virgins would pore over every aspect of the prison security system until an exploit was discovered. A hole would be opened in the prison's firewall and Linus would be rescued through an SSH tunnel.

All the while the prison officials would be just sitting there going, "Doo doo, doot-doot-doot, doo de doo doo-dah..."

Then, in a feat of classically passionate Finnish revenge, Linus would initiate a global hack which would make all of our cities go coo-coo like in Superman III, like when the little silhouette guys in the walk|don't-walk lights starting punching each other out.

And all the while the government would be just sitting there going, "Doo doo, doot-doot-doot, doo de doo doo-dah..."

Re:Industry Standard?

[cnelzie]

It's used by some lower tier autmotive suppliers. It's used rather exstensively in many smaller to maybe mid-sized architectural firms (At least from what I have seen of architectural firms.) It's also used rather extensively in the design of many consumer products, like grills, stoves and refridgerators.

    The "industry" that uses CAD software is rather wide and deep.

Re:Who cares? AutoCAD is a toy for students

[mrycar]

I work at primarily a UGS house, but AutoCAD is still entrenched in the facilities layout, Electrical Controls, facilities management areas. We do cheat though, we use factoryCAD a add-on which provides parametric capabilities.

Now this suit does raise concerns, we manage all data with Teamcenter, We require one data management solution to keep all of the relationships of parts, tools, and layout linked to reduce effort. With the suit AutoDesk may break some of those links. Also our Parametric plugin may cease making valid DWGs.

This might be a good test case

[symbolic]

I believe, that of all things, proprietary document formats should be illegal. If I endeavor to purchase a product to create something for myself, my business, or even someone else, it should not the vendor's choice as to how I must access that document at a later point in time. If I decide that it is no longer feasible to continue using the product (due to licensing, technical, or other considerations), I should be free to access my data with any other software of my choosing. The problem with proprietary formats is that they impose what I see as form ownership by proxy, whereby the owner of the software used to create the document has a sufficient degree of control over the documents themselves.

Oh, hell no!

[myxiplx]

I hope to god Autodesk loose this case. Their DWG / DWF strategy is a complete and utter shambles. We use AutoCAD because there are tons of plug-ins for our industry, it makes it a very good tool for our drawing office.

Unfortunately, while AutoCAD itself works fine on our network, most of their more recent tools do not. It's a minor point of them not supporting folder redirection... Attempts to point Autodesk at Microsoft's developer guidelines have so far fallen on deaf ears, and I've been complaining of this for over a year now.

Thanks to Autodesks stranglehold on DWG, nobody else produces reasonably priced DWG markup tools any more. And that leaves us stuck using old, buggy, unsupported software, purely because it's the most up to date package produced by Autodesk that still runs on our network and can markup these files.

The sooner someone reverse-engineers DWG the better.

PS. Whoever at Autodesk thought the best way to update their DWF viewer was to embed it within IE just wants shooting. Yes, you heard me, they took a stand alone program and decided it would be better off if it relied on IE... They even went to the effort of creating the File menu structure in html! And yes, SP2 broke it...

Re:Trademark, what?

[FLEB]

The most compelling argument I could see them giving is that people could start considering Autodesk's products inferior for their inability to open subtly malformed (but supposedly "genuine") files correctly. It's kind of like Apple only legally allowing their software on their own hardware so they can limit the possible configurations and better manage the user experience (not that I agree with either stance, but it's where they're coming from, I imagine).

Re:It's not about reverse engineering.

[winnabago]

their products only working with signed drawings
Not true, at least yet. From EFF:

it pops up a warning dialog stating that the file was not created by an app authorized by Autodesk and might therefore result in "stability issues." (Users can disable these warnings, but they are enabled by default.)

So I can still do my work, open and save my files, regardless. I don't see why this a frivolous lawsuit. Trademarks have to be defended. I will agree with you in that the DMCA is probably not the approach they should be using, but there is a fine line between completely opening the format, something which they probably can't do simply because of the 20 years of evolution that has made it an in- house mess (and they already have the open DXF format), and suing everyone who trys to use it - a la Adobe in the early days of PDF.

I don't know, as an admin, I would welcome a simple warning for my users, especially if they are going to be getting files from consultants and other sources unknown.

Printers are so much different than an enterprise implementation of a multi-library CAD package that I don't know if the HP analogy works here. If generic ink breaks something on your deskjet, it can't be saved back to a server and cause thousands of drawings to ship with a critical fire escape symbol missing. There are many very real technological reasons to check file integrity, which is what they are really doing here.

Many on here are trying to spin to towards corporate greed, but I think this court case comes down to respect above all else.

Key Difference

[AmericanInKiev]

Let's say the DMCA etc basically say that "breaking into a locked box" is unlawful, even if the lock is encryption etc...

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

Re:Trademark protection != Denial of interoperabil

[dkone]

I am not sure which planet you read Slashdot on, but on planet Earth what you are saying is either completely wrong, or you are not correctly verbalizing you argument. In deference to you extremely low /.ID# I am hoping that it is the latter.

"But no way in hell can AutoDesk deny interoperability with their file formats."

I have been using CADD for way longer then I would like to admit, but lets just say I started when CADD was invented/initially commercially available. Autodesk has always been the stinky 600 pound gorilla in the room. I have used ACADD among many other competing products, I personally find ACCAD to be very difficult and counter intuitive from a UI standpoint. However; that is not why I am replying to you ridiculous statement.

As a matter of fact AutoDesk ROUTINELY denies interoperability with their file formats. I currently use VisualCADD for 2D drafting, mainly preparing details for the gas stations we build for our customers. VisualCADD is a competing product that is actively being developed. I constantly receive ACADD DWG files from engineers which I can NO LONGER open if the engineering firm is on the latest version of ACADD (I think it is release 14). When contacting VisualCADD support about this, they informed me that this is standard operating procedure for Autodesk on every release. They change the file formats and all competing products must stumble around until a import filter is built. It is complete and utter bullshit.

I should not have to be forced to buy a multi thousand dollar application to do simple drawings. Further more, the Engineer/Customer of the Engineer owns the drawing and SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT to do with their IP what they want. It is like a pencil manufacturer putting restrictions on anything you create with their pencil.

DK

Re:Trademark, what?

[R3d M3rcury]

[...] 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".

Sort of off-topic, but I always liked this one.

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.

CAD and AutoDesk

[DAtkins]

I'd just like to rant for awhile about AutoDesk. I hope no one minds...

I've been a draftsman/designer for 12 years now. In the consulting engineering industry (for commercial, residential, & industrial building design) it is the defacto program. Even companies that standardise with other CAD programs, they have a copy of AutoCAD somewhere just to work with everyone else.

I started out on AutoCAD r10 running on DOS, and I'm currently using AutoCAD Arch Desktop 2004. I've been involved with the program from the level of an individual draftsman, to a CAD manager working with over 100 other CAD operators. I can honestly say, that while AutoCAD's interface (keyboard based) is one of the fastest interfaces around - the file format has always been AutoDesk's most problematic issue.

In AutoCAD 2004, the only file format it will open are the 2000 and 2004 DWG file format. An absolutely useless number of file formats for a company who has had a NEW FORMAT EVERY FREAKING VERSION. What's more, the only other format that AutoCAD opens, is the old DXF format (thank goodness for that at least).

AutoDesk has a horrible habit of pretending that it is the only CAD software in the world. In addition to it's own short term memory about previous DWG formats (thanks for making my old CAD files unopenable assholes), it has no clue how to open a Microstation file, or any other of the other competing formats out there.

Yes, I know you can download a drawing file converter for old ACAD files, but this should have been included in ACAD itself - and the file converter still doesn't open DGN files.

Microstation on the other hand, has changed it's file format ONCE in 10 versions. Not only will it open up the old file format, it also opens up EVERY AutoCAD format as well. I currently use Microstation to convert my old DWG's to new DWG's because MStation does a better job of it than Autodesk's downloadable converter. Hell, the free Bentley DWF-style reader opens up every format as well - something that AutoDesk's viewer can't even do for it's own native format.

DWG files have a long history of becomeing corrupted, often to the point of being unable to be recovered. Do you have a corrupted DWG file that AutoCAD can't recover? Open it in Microstation, and it will recover the file for you instead.

The fact is, AutoCAD is the dominant CAD software for two reasons only. #1, the interface is faster for old-school users (though I must say, a properly set-up system with a trained MStation user is only about 5% slower). #2, since AutoCAD 2004 doesn't open up R14 ACAD files - and can't save down to R14 either - people with R14 are forced to upgrade against their wishes. As if there has been a good reason to upgrade besides mouse wheel support since R13...

Basically, I hate AutoDesk even though I use their product. They do not care a wit about their customers, the industry, or even producing a reasonable product. Even today, 1/4 of the time I save a drawing I LOSE DATA. Nothing like finishing up a design, clicking save to go home, and losing 2 hours of work in the process. I'm sure that AutoDesk would love to say that their new TrueDWG initiative will save me from these worries, but I've had this problem with DWG's (made 100% by me, in AutoCAD) since I first started using the product.

Instead of working with customers to create a truly open file format and competing based upon a superior interface and support - they instead choose compete through vendor lock-in. It's the same as if MS produced a new version of Office every 2 years that didn't open up any other format on earth including the previous version. Oh wait, that's what they do too.. they can both kiss my butt.

AutoCAD is good and bad

[MichailS]

For 2D it is probably the best out there. For 3D it is a joke.

I'm using Mechanical Desktop at the moment and the MS Paint/Photoshop analogy is quite appropriate. It is a suicide-prone and retarded cro-magnon midget compared to übermench like Pro/Engineer and Solidworks, at least as long as 3D is regarded.

It is excellent for 2D markup though.

Autodesk have always been the Microsoft of the CAD business and tried to crush the competitors using this kind of scemes for as long as I have known them, which is about 15 years.

There are at least a dozen half-baked CADs out there that can read and write DWG files, but usually there is something that goews awry in the process. I had a backsplash the other month when I recieved a DWG and looked at it in TurboCAD. All was well except that the table with all the important data was missing, which made our communication about the job rather confusing.