By Randall S. Newton
Editor-in-Chief
The Open Design Alliance accuses Autodesk of copyright infringement for unlicensed use of software created by the Alliance and its member companies. The accusation comes after recent news reports (the first of which was the AECnews article, “Autodesk to Discontinue 2005 Infrastructure Products to Avoid DGN Enganglement with Open Design Alliance”) about Autodesk stopping distribution of certain products in its Infrastructure Solutions Division (ISD).
The statement reads:
The Open Design Alliance understands that Autodesk has, for approximately two years, been distributing application programs which include our copyrighted DGNdirect libraries, for reading and writing DGN V8 format files. Autodesk does not have, nor has it ever had, any license or right to use DGNdirect in its application programs. We believe that Autodesk, by its actions, is infringing our copyright.
The Alliance says it first became aware that Autodesk was using the DGNdirect libraries on December 20, 2004, and that it raised the issue with Autodesk that day. The Alliance provided the media with a time line stating that it became aware of additional releases of Autodesk software using the DGNdirect libraries in April 2005 and that it “only recently discovered that Autodesk Civil 3D 2005, Autodesk Land Desktop 2005, Autodesk Civil Design 2005, Autodesk Survey 2005, and Autodesk Survey 2006 also appear to be using DGNdirect.” AECnews reported on April 25, 2006 that Autodesk would be discontinuing these 2005-generation ISD products because of the use of the code library in question.
Autodesk representatives were unavailable this morning for comment.
Disputes between the Open Design Alliance and Autodesk are nothing new, they just usually stay behind the scenes. Over the years Autodesk has acquired several companies who were at the time members of the Alliance. With each acquisition, Autodesk had to separate out code acquired from the Alliance before integrating the new software into its product line.
The Alliance says it has invited Autodesk "many times" over the years to join, and has always been turned down. When a company joins the Alliance, it must agree to share any knowledge of DWG with the Alliance for the benefit of the membership. Autodesk maintains that for it to become a member, that rule would have to change so that all member companies would share the internal workings of their proprietary file formats, thus putting all members on even terms.
One question and answer in the Alliance background statement to the media should give users pause:
Q: What about users who have the Autodesk applications that include DGNdirect? Are they covered by their Autodesk software license?
A: No—a company can not provide license rights to others that it does not itself possess. Our reading of the AutoCAD license agreement is that it does not indemnify users from liability for copyright infringement. We recommend that users obtain competent legal advice in this matter.
The Open Design Alliance is a non-profit consortium that develops software libraries for its member firms. Most of its work is on Open DWG and DWGdirect, code libraries created by reverse engineering DWG, the AutoCAD file format that has become a de facto standard for 2D CAD. The Alliance's DGNdirect code, for using files created in Bentley MicroStation and related products, is published with the support and participation of Bentley. The membership includes most of the world's CAD companies as well as many engineering firms and academic institutions. Microsoft and Google are members because of products they acquired (Visio and SketchUp, respectively) that use the Alliance DWG code libraries.
Related article: "Another Round of the Same Old Fight: ODA Starts Reverse Engineering DWG 2007"
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