ADSK vs ODA: Yes, Maybe, No

I'm reading through the ODA's counterclaims against Autodesk. (Randall Newton has posted the ADSK vs ODA documents at his AECnews.com Web site.) And I'm wincing at the occasional historical error, like:

"Prior to 1998 and dating back nearly to the genesis of the .DWG format, independent companies and developers have made programming tool kits for reading and writing DWG."

Er, no. DWG was developed around 1982, maybe even late 1970s, because Mike Riddle's CAD software (upon which AutoCAD was based) was the first to employ DWG as its file format. The first to independently read DWG was file recovery software from Cyco Automation, which I think was demo'ed to me in 1988. For many years, reading DWG was good enough. The first API to write DWG came out in the early 1990s, a decade or more later after the genesis of DWG.

"Autodesk’s application for a temporary restraining order is ... an improper attempt to improperly restrain competition..."

I agree it's an attempt to restrain competition; the question for the court, it is improper? There are numerous legal ways to restrain competition: copyrights, patents, secret processes, non-predatory competitive pricing, and so on.

"Autodesk, not ODA, is the party that has violated the Lanham Act. Autodesk’s TrustedDWG Technology sends false and misleading messages to customers who use CAD programs other than Autodesk."

Autodesk's rationale for adding the scary TrustedDWG message is that many AutoCAD support problems are caused by malformed DWG files created by competitors. I'd like to see some hard data to back that up. In more than a decade of opening competitor-created DWG files in AutoCAD, I've never had them cause AutoCAD problems; I do have problems with AutoCAD crashing on its own, with drawings created by AutoCAD. Autodesk should have in its database the dozens of error reports I've sent, particularly with AutoCAD 2007.

Let's look at counter-spin. Release 13 was touted by Autodesk as "the most powerful AutoCAD ever." The counter-spin: it required the most powerful hardware ever. AutoCAD 2007 implements TrustedDWG to avoid crashing from foreign DWG files; could the counter-spin be that AutoCAD 2007 is untrustworthy, the cause of the crashes ?

"There is no analogous open format [like OpenDocument or PDF/A] for drawings created by CAD programs."

Wrong! There are many open CAD formats, where "open" is defined as documented: IGES, PDES, DXF, DWF, SAT, JT Open, etc. Two of them, DXF and DWF, are published by Autodesk for free.

"Seeing the need for read and write access to DWG files and being determined that the DWG format should become an open standard, a number of companies joined together in February 1998 to form the OpenDWG Alliance, an independent, non-profit corporation dedicated to making DWG an open, accessible standard format for storage of drawing data."

The history has been revised somewhat. Visio formed the OpenDWG Alliance in its fight against Autodesk, in trying to sell more copies of IntelliCAD. Visio couldn't do it on its own, so the ODA's purpose was to pool competitor's collective knowledge to figure out the more obscure parts of DWG -- which, some insiders claim, even Autodesk isn't sure of, because parts go back to Mike Riddle's design.

"...AutoCAD embeds a string of code into every DWG file it writes that identifies the DWG file as written by an Autodesk product."

This is not a new problem for the computer industry. When IBM first launched the PC, its BIOS contained a copyright string (text) from IBM. Competitors needed to copy the BIOS in order to (1) be able to start up the computer; and (2) be compatible with IBM. The industry eventually was able to copy the copyright string in a way that withstood court challenges. Anyone recall that?

"This function effectively acts as a 'lock-out' string in ODA-created DWG files."

That's an extreme statement. The TrustedDWG msg does not lock out non-Autodesk DWG files. AutoCAD's DwgCheck system variable has three settings:

0 - suppress display of the TrustedDWG dialog box (default setting).
1 - display warning in dialog box.
2 - display warning on command line (new to AutoCAD 2007).

DwgCheck has been in AutoCAD since release 2000. The warning does not lock out use of foreign DWG files; like any warning message that is repeated, users eventually ignore it.

"[The dialog box]...disrupts many programs that perform batch processing of DWG files..."

This is true. One college instructor had created a script system that processed drawing assignments handed in by his students. The message added to AutoCAD 2007's startup screwed up his system, and he spent weeks trying to figure out a workaround.

Comments

[Deelip Menezes]

You said: "Autodesk's rationale for adding the scary TrustedDWG message is that many AutoCAD support problems are caused by malformed DWG files created by competitors. I'd like to see some hard data to back that up. In more than a decade of opening competitor-created DWG files in AutoCAD, I've never had them cause AutoCAD problems".

Even I am yet to see hard data to show that DWGdirect created DWG files cause problems in AutoCAD. However, I have found some very interesting incriminating evidence. In fact, I am surprised how the Autodesk legal team didn't present it in their initial complaint. Please read my article "ODA shoots itself in the foot" at www.deelip.com. Sorry for taking readers away from this blog, but its too long to post here.

[Bill Fane]

Re the IBM string in their original BIOS: yes , this is true. In the good old days, 'way back in the last millenium, I had a copy of the "workshop manual" for the original PC. It included a complete printout of the BIOS assembler code. Quite visible near the top was the text string "Copyright IBM". Many IBM software titles, including DOS itself, would not run unless they found this string in the correct memory location.

The workaround; I had an early PC clone with a Phoenix BIOS. A bit of exploring with DEBUG revealed that its BIOS contained the string "not Copyright IBM". By an amazing coincidence, the last two words landed at the same address.

I think the legal side of this is simple enough. Adesk has the right to use and manage their own data format any way they choose. They do have the right to ask 3rd parties that produce dwg files not to pretend to be AutoCAD. It doesn't matter which files crash Adesk products more often. AutoCAD, RealDWG and TrustedWhatever are Autodesk trademarks, end of story.

Oh, and burning your house down is a perfectly legitimate way to get rid of the cockroaches...