Lawsuit News

[Lucas Wilson]

Hi all,

About a week ago, ASSIMILATE filed its response to the Autodesk complaint.

You can find the full text of all legal proceedings to date here:

http://www.assimilateinc.com/AFO/responsefiling.html

Best,

Lucas
-----
ASSIMILATE, inc.
LA, CA, USA

[SalaTar]

Shady on Assimilates part is all it says to me...

[David Birdy]

Thanks for posting and Good Luck Lukas !!!

Send those attorneys to the hills!!!:angry03:

Dave

[Tai Wah Lim]

Lucas, our decision to go for Scratch will not be in anyway affect by this. Good Luck. Lim

[Michael Hastings]

Luki:

While I am not currently in the market for a program like Scratch, I read your response out of general interest in Copyright and Patent law abuses as I have been the victim of frivolous patent suits before - dismissed eventually but still a pain. It appears that you have excellent representation and that this in fact is a frivolous lawsuit intended to intimidate you and your potential customers - and I am sorry you are forced to deal with it.

If it helps and if any autodesk officers are listening I will say this: as a manufacturer doing significant design and CNC work I am a potential customer for AutoCad - one of the leading programs and a flagship Autodesk product. However, I am very offended by companies that practice this sort of intimidation and as such this sours me on ALL of autodesk's products - and Autocad has now moved down my list of potential purchases.

I have no relationship nor have I ever met with or communicated with anyone at Assimilate, but let this be my first:

Keep up the good work and do your best to ignore this garbage.

[conrad gaunt]

Now I know why lawyers exist, although I think I understood bits.

Good luck, hope it get resolved for you, right will beat might given half a chance, and apparently good representation..

I'm always interested in what people say, and why..

I remember a while ago Luki you didn't read one of my posts properly, which meant you posted some stuff you regretted, but then appologized and took it down. I remember posting "stay of the drink it'll make you paranoid". I also remember you saying, "just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you". I thought it was a good reply (though I wasn't), but this really underlines it for me. Is it really as cynical as AquaVideoRed206 says, or are Autodesk sincere? What a waste of time, really, ..you probably shouldn't say..

Now I'm paranoid.. better cover myself..
I am not affiliated with Scratch in any shape or form, in fact I argued with Luki once, till we both saw sense, which was fortunately immediately.. my opinion is my own opinion subject to change without warning etc.. need a drink!

ps, I still think you need a full functioning, non-realtime, run on any machine with ram, cpu driven version of Scratch for £6k, and then the premium version which I now think might utilize something like the NVIDIA TESLA PERSONAL SUPERCOMPUTER/ REALTIME VERSION, with 256 processing cores, as pointed out on another thread, for somewhat more :)

Autodesk still haven't succeeded in selling me anything, ever, and it would seem better to me if they focused their attention on developing software rather attacking another company frankly. It doesn't bring software costs down, thats for sure..

These cases always seem so pathetic, so I hope its over soon for you, i'm imagining its like hearing a mosquito in the room as you're drifting into sleep, you just don't need it, but what do I know

[Kyle Mallory]

Lucas,

I think its fair to say (and no big surprise) that I'm not a big fan of Assimilate, or my interpretation of its business practices in general. But, I have a LOT of respect for you guys publicly posting your legal briefs in this matter. In my eyes, it goes a long way to show that you've got nothing to hide. Not many companies would be willing to do this. Keep it up... Who knows, I may actually start to like you guys!

To justice prevailing!

[Dylan Reeve]

I couldn't read the Autodesk complaint, and I'm not familiar enough with SCRATCH or certainly Cyborg, but it does seem absurd. It's very well defined what copyright does and does not cover - and ideas is one of the things it doesn't cover.

To infringe copyright on UI Assimilate would essentially have to copy the actual images used in the Cyborg interface, or replicate them almost identically. Simply having a similar appearance or functionality doesn't cut it for copyright (patents would be a different issue).

Good luck Assimilate. I hate to see these predatory IP lawsuits.

(Oh look, and on further reading I see that Autodesk probably doesn't legally even own the copyright they are asserting has been violated. Neat.)

[Todd Jaspers]

I know companies sue based on the fear of lost revenue and market share. Does this mean that Autodesk is scared that Assimilate is cutting into their Lustre Market share?
I know Autodesk only sells a few Lustre's a year in each region, so it would be easy to make Autodesk really scared just selling a couple scratch stations.

[Lucas Wilson]

Thanks for the support, guys. For obvious reasons, I cannot comment on anything related to an ongoing legal proceeding. But the words of support means a lot to me and to the people at ASSIMILATE.

Kyle - thanks, I think? :) At the end of the day, businesses are people. ASSIMILATE is a small company with a big profile. We are only 17 full-time people. We make decisions that we think are best for what we do, who we are, and who our customers are. Sometimes we're right, sometimes we're wrong - but we don't make any decisions lightly. We all know each other very well, and having that kind of personal connection with *everyone* in your company makes you think differently about how things happen and why.

Lucas
-----
ASSIMILATE, inc.
LA, CA, USA
(currently in Japan)

[Mirela Budimic]

"If it helps and if any autodesk officers are listening I will say this: as a manufacturer doing significant design and CNC work I am a potential customer for AutoCad - one of the leading programs and a flagship Autodesk product. However, I am very offended by companies that practice this sort of intimidation and as such this sours me on ALL of autodesk's products - and Autocad has now moved down my list of potential purchases."


Since 1996 I have been using Microstation and never like Autocad. On ibc all this years discreet presentation was very loud and proud and when Autodesk bought them they were even more louder. Oposite to Quantel which booth was always elegant and cool. I would say decent.
I use Cleaner XL from Autodesk but I use this from the time when this was not their software. Ha! Helllo Autodesk buy Houdini and Modo and you will be complete...

[michael zaletel]

This is really complicated I.P. Law. I'm not going to take sides but AutoDesk does have valid points of its' own. I would recommend anyone commenting on this at least download and scan through the two PDF documents. There are important and intelligent legal arguments put forth on both sides that may prove useful in your own endeavors in the future.

Any time former employees of a company whose intellectual property was sold to pay off debt start a new company and enter the same line of business, they are going to run into extreme difficulties if the buyer has the kind of money AutoDesk has and if the employees are successful in their new venture. I'd recommend settling out of court. Honestly.

-shooter

[GlennChan]

Good luck to Assimilate- I would hope that they win.

I have no idea what the law actually is (and how the judges will interpret it), but IMO I would hope that the court rules in favour of Assimilate. I read over one of the PDF documents and Autodesk is claiming infringement over superficial GUI elements, which don't really matter to the end user.
This kind of lawsuit distracts companies from making a good product. A win for Autodesk would (in a small way) stifle innovation.

[Dylan Reeve]

Any time former employees of a company whose intellectual property was sold to pay off debt start a new company and enter the same line of business, they are going to run into extreme difficulties if the buyer has the kind of money AutoDesk has and if the employees are successful in their new venture. I'd recommend settling out of court. Honestly.

Unfortunately settling out of court with a competitor that makes much much much more money than you might be difficult.

In the filings from Assimilate they seem to have a pretty strong case. Gerk Huisma was never an employee of 5D, he was a freelance contractor, and in Dutch law (he was working in the Netherlands) he would own the intellectual property he creates. Without a clear agreement somewhere showing that he has assigned his rights on that development to 5D (and thus to Autodesk) it seems that they are claiming infringement on rights they don't own.

[Tim Whitcomb]

Good luck to Assimilate- I would hope that they win.

I have no idea what the law actually is (and how the judges will interpret it), but IMO I would hope that the court rules in favour of Assimilate. I read over one of the PDF documents and Autodesk is claiming infringement over superficial GUI elements, which don't really matter to the end user.
This kind of lawsuit distracts companies from making a good product. A win for Autodesk would (in a small way) stifle innovation.

This tactic is kind of the purpose of these law suits... to bleed the attacker with 1000 cuts... and Autodesk has DEEP pockets.

companies like Blackberry spends $8 to $10M a year suing people... just to stifle competitors... most have no merit, but the legal costs kill the little guy.. thats the whole point. welcome to litigious America.

defending these suits can costs hundreds and hundreds of thousands on the low end...

What is the status of this law suit?