Newton software company demands maker of Photoshop erase editing tool

EveryScape, a small Newton company, yesterday sued Adobe Systems over a Photoshop tool that lets users "clone" sections of photos.

The company, founded in 2002 by Byong Mok Oh, says it has patents on techniques for easily adjusting the perspective and lighting on pieces of images copied to other parts of images (for example, to erase a bird from in front of a cloud)and that Adobe illegally copied those techniques. In a lawsuit filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Boston, Everyscape says it began selling a Photoshop plugin called "Perspective Clone Brush" in early 2005, but that:

Three months later, on April 27, 2005, Adobe announced the release of its next version of its PHOTOSHOP program, Adobe PHOTOSHOP CS2 ("CS2"). Adobe press releases touted PHOTOSHOP CS2's new feature, “Vanishing Point, which allows users to clone, paint and transform image objects while retaining visual perspective." Adobe's promotional literature called Vanishing Point "Nothing less than revolutionary” and claimed "[O]ne use and you'll wonder how you ever lived without it." In fact, however, Vanishing Point used the same functionality as the Mok3 Perspective Clone Brush technology.

• Everyscape complaint
• First patent
• Second patent