By Owen Wengerd on Monday, December 08, 2008 10:03 PM

In a recent flurry of filings, Autodesk attacks SolidWorks' motion to dismiss charges, and SolidWorks counters. The legal soap opera reads like a "he said, she said" schoolyard argument, except with more at stake. In my reading of the documents, I felt that Autodesk spent a lot of time straining at gnats in the weaker parts of its argument (perhaps intent on maximizing the defense costs -- unlike its approach in the Vernor case, where it chose to settle its weakest arguments). So far, SolidWorks appears to be up to the challenge.

One thing that struck me is that Autodesk still refuses to state what exactly is false in SolidWorks' advertising claims. One might read into Autodesk's failure to address this and a few other specific challenges raised by SolidWorks that they are not primarily int ... Read More »

By Owen Wengerd on Friday, November 21, 2008 11:10 AM

In a filing last week, DS SolidWorks argues for dismissal of Autodesk's lawsuit. The documents filed with this motion to dismiss are voluminous, and include extensive citations to other cases. This indicates that SolidWorks has decided to invest the necessary resources to defend themselves.

SolidWorks claims that Autodesk is using this lawsuit to "bludgeon" SolidWorks and to achieve the results it was unable to achieve via the US Patent and Trademark Office. Their basic argument is that Autodesk does not own the "DWG" and "real" marks, therefore it has no standing to claim injury from SolidWorks' use of those terms. With regard to Autodesk's claims of unfair business practices and false advertising, SolidWorks argues that Autodesk has not stated why the statements are false, and that in any case the statements in question are not actionable because they are mere "puffery& ... Read More »

By Owen Wengerd on Monday, November 03, 2008 6:09 PM

According to a proposed settlement order filed on Friday, Autodesk and Tim Vernor have agreed to settle Vernor's "Second Claim" for unfair and deceptive practices. In the settlement, Vernor agrees to drop his demand for a declaratory judgement that Autodesk has no right to interfere with Vernor's sale of Autodesk software, and his demand for an injunction prohibiting Autodesk from further interference. In exchange, Autodesk agrees to pay actual and punitive damages, attorney's fees, and "such other relief as the Court finds appropriate".

Essentially Vernor got everything he wanted, as the court's previous order denying Autodesk's motion to dismiss is almost as good as an injunction. By settling this secondary claim for a relatively small amount, Autodesk can now focus its resources& ... Read More »

By Owen Wengerd on Thursday, October 23, 2008 5:26 PM

In an October 13 filing, DS SolidWorks exercised their right to have the case heard by a federal judge instead of a magistrate judge. Yesterday, the case was reassigned to Judge Willian H. Alsup.

By Owen Wengerd on Tuesday, October 14, 2008 2:05 AM

Since this web site has expanded to cover CAD industry litigation in general, I have added the recently filed Autodesk v. SolidWorks lawsuit to the docket history page. Over time I will get the Grapevine page updated with links to commentary about the suit.

By Owen Wengerd on Tuesday, October 14, 2008 12:53 AM

The original web site has expanded to cover CAD industry litigation in general, so the domain name was changed to reflect the change in content. The NewsFeed page RSS feed is available at http://www.cadcourt.com/NewsFeed.aspx?rssid=1, and you can view docket history for tracked cases by following the links on the Docket page.

By Owen Wengerd on Monday, July 28, 2008 8:10 PM

In their joint status report filed today, Autodesk and Vernor announced that Vernor's "Second Claim" (for unfair and deceptive practices) will be settled out of court, and they propose a trial date of June 1, 2009 to settle the remaining claim. After the scathing May 20 order denying Autodesk's motion to dismiss, Autodesk is essentially left with only one bullet in the chamber: its argument that the AutoCAD SLA (Software License Agreement) applies to Vernor by virtue of the unauthorized transfer of the physical copies of AutoCAD. If that argument fails, it appears that the only thing left to determine at trial is the amount of declaratory and injunctive relief that Autodesk is liable for.

By Owen Wengerd on Friday, May 23, 2008 2:07 PM

As I expected, the Vernor ruling is getting a lot of airplay, and a Google search will turn up myriad discussions on the subject (most, unfortunately, devoid of real value). Here are two links to useful expert commentary:

• Godel Metric law blog
• EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation)

By Owen Wengerd on Thursday, May 22, 2008 10:59 AM

Famed copyright expert William Patry discusses the Vernor victory on his blog. Followup comments contain interesting analysis and discussion as well.

By Owen Wengerd on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 8:33 PM

For those of you following the Vernor case, today's order elicited a blog post from Public Citizen, the group representing Vernor in the case. This represents a biased viewpoint from one of the parties in the suit. I will post links to independent legal analysis as I find it.