Newton software company demands maker of Photoshop erase editing tool

By adamg on Tue, 09/21/2010 - 7:35am

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.

Neighborhoods:

Newton

Topics:

Technology

Ad:

Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

They might've knowingly

By anon on Tue, 09/21/2010 - 9:44am.

They might've knowingly copied or been inspired by this. Or, just as likely, parallel invention.

For anyone not familiar with the software industry, the patent system is FULL of patents for techniques that should be obvious. Most software is full of technical violations of patents that should never have been patents in the first place. Big companies file lots of illegitimate software patents so that, if another big company tried to sue them for violating an illegitimate software patent, then they can sue in response, since the other company is almost certainly violating some of their patents. Sometimes they formally cross-license illegitimate patents. Then there are "investors" who do nothing but try to find an illegitimate patent that can make a company pay up big-time. At times, it gets decidedly criminal.

Don't know whether the patented material in this case is obvious. They might indeed have a legitimate complain.

Good points, but...

By anon on Tue, 09/21/2010 - 11:57am.

...Photoshop had a cloning tool since well before 2002, so ya gotta wonder...

Was wondering about that

By Eighthman on Tue, 09/21/2010 - 3:55pm.

I can't remember when the tool came about, but I only have Photoshop Elements 3 on my computer. It was available in late 2004 and has a clone tool. I don't remember if Elements 2 had it (from 2002, which I used before upgrading to 3 -- haven't felt the need to upgrade further, so far). So the "vanishing point" thing is significantly different?

but not ones that retain

By cowsandmilk on Tue, 09/21/2010 - 9:40pm.

but not ones that retain visual perspective... that's the key phrase

More to the point, this functionality sounds complicated

By Chris Devers on Tue, 09/21/2010 - 2:00pm.

The suit alleges that Adobe started shipping a workalike three months after EveryScape did. But this functionality sounds like something awfully big to have ripped off and folded into Photoshop that quickly. So it seems we have one of two things here:

• Industrial espionage. Somehow, EveryScape's code was lifted wholesale and ported into Photoshop. I find this unlikely -- with a such a huge, complex codebase, could they really have added something like this, worked it through the QA validation process, and started shipping it in under 3 months? Most huge applications like Photoshop get locked down & put into final test mode weeks ahead of the ship date, so the narrow for this to get in is even smaller than it seems.

• Independent development of an obvious idea. I find this more likely -- Adobe was already working on the functionality and had no idea about EveryScape's product until they were almost ready to ship, but it's an obvious idea (if perhaps complicated to implement), and therefore unpatentable in any event.

But then I suspect most computer nerds would find such ideas obvious (at least in hindsight), which is why we typically aren't the patent lawyers in these cases.