Patently silly
So in a WebWord Posting on May 3[03/25/2004 - Link removed - John Rhodes is apparently not leaving his archives online.], I said that Adobe and Macromedia had both stolen features from each other. Well, take a look at this news story.
At least 2 juries agree: now both Macromedia and Adobe have won a lawsuit on patent infringement. I think it's completely ridiculous. It's not a bad thing for companies to be influenced by the ideas of other comanies, it's only bad when people are out there stealing code and the like. It's ridiculous for patent laws are being used to keep people from making common interfaces that would benefit everyone.
The quote from Macromedia implied that they had sued out of self-defense, and that the customers were the losers, but I haven't followed this closely enough to say whether that's true or just a PR thing.
Posted by Chad Lundgren on Friday, May 10, 2002 (Link)
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