Autodesk Sues ODA: Possible Implications for Geospatial Companies

Randall Newton is detailing Autodesk’s trademark (not patent) infringement case against the Open Design Alliance (ODA). GIS users/developers need to be aware of this action for a number of reasons:

Autodesk is demanding:

(1) ODA and licensees stop distributing DWGdirect 2007, the latest libraries, which support AutoCAD 2007 format and the TrueDWG technology.

(2) recall of all products that use, DWGdirect 2007.

(3) ODA tell Autodesk of all recipients of the DWGdirect 2007 code and correct any files created with it.

The reason this impacts geospatial technology is that many GIS vendors license ODA technology including ESRI, Intergraph, Leica and others. Any products that use the latest code (and I can’t be sure which do at this point) could, should the judge agree with Autodesk, be recalled. Now, will that happen? I’m not a lawyer but I’d suspect a judge would want to investigate a bit more before disrupting so many businesses. A hearing on the request for the injunction is set for tomorrow.

As Newton points out, ODA is not in a good position to rally the troops just now. Its executive director was put on administrative leave recently and an employee of a company hired to assist in Alliance administration has been charged with embezzlement. I won’t be at Autodesk University this year, but I expect there’ll be some talk on this topic, at least among the CAD journos.