The verdict for Macromedia included a damages award of $4.9
million. Macromedia intends to ask the court to issue an injunction
to stop Adobe's infringement, and also intends to appeal the
verdict in the initial Adobe case. In that case, Adobe won damages
of $2.8 million and said that it expects that the court will issue
an injunction to stop Macromedia's infringement.
"The score is now Adobe one, Macromedia one, customers zero,"
said Rob Burgess, chairman and CEO of Macromedia.
Adobe was found to infringe three Macromedia patents. One
infringement relates to “changing blended elements and automatic
re-blending of elements” in the Adobe Illustrator product. Another
two patents relate to visually displaying and editing sound
waveforms and are infringed by Adobe’s Premiere product. Adobe has
said that it plans to appeal.
In the Adobe victory two weeks ago, Macromedia was found to be
infringing Adobe's “reconfigurable tabbed palette patent,” a method
of displaying and working with multiple sets of information in the
same area of the computer screen.
In October 2001, Macromedia brought a patent infringement suit
against Adobe in the Northern District of California relating to
additional patents that Macromedia believes that Adobe infringes.
This case is scheduled for June 2003.
