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In this issue: Clarizen SaaS Project Managment
Trademark Watch: Give Me Back "My" DWG -
SolidWorks' DWG-names Out of the Inbox and the other regular columns. |
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issue #566 : : july 1, 2008 |
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Clarizen SaaS Project Managment Project management software abounds, but Avinoam Nowogrodski aims to solve the problem three-fold:
And one more: target Microsoft Project users. If you've used Google Docs or Yahoo Mail, then you've experienced SaaS. The software is runs from an off-site server, with data stored on the server or locally. In Clarizen's case, they host the server, which means updates are automatic and instant. For example, Clarizen v2.1, announced today, adds an open API. The drawback is that an Internet connection is required for the software to work. The customer initially downloads some code that creates the connection between SolidWorks and the server. Within SolidWorks, the user interface begins with a toolbar. Mr Nowogrodski has experience with SolidWorks, being the founder of SmarTeam, the Israeli PLM software company bought up by SolidWorks' parent, Dassault Systemes. After leaving SmarTeam, he started Clarizen 2.5 years ago, launching v1.0 a half year ago. The name is a joining of the words "clarity" and "zen." The cost is low: $24.95/month for 10 licenses, with discounts available, such as half-price for ex-Project users. Marketing is thin. In addition to no-cost interviews, like the one he gave upFront.eZine, Clarizen takes out Google ads and does direct phone calls to prospects. Future plans call for expanding Clarizen to AutoCAD and -- maybe, just maybe -- to Pro/E. Nearest competitors? Autodesk's Buzzsaw, PTC's Pro/Link, and UGS's TeamCenter.
Trademark
Watch: I've been covering Autodesk's attempt to cancel trademarks registered by the Open Design Alliance that include the letters "DWG," most notably OpenDWG. Autodesk feels that DWG belongs to Autodesk. Autodesk is attempting the same with SolidWorks and softelect, both of whom registered DWG-related trademarks with the US Patent and Trademark Office. DWGGateway and DWGEditor are registered by SolidWorks, RasterDWG by softelec. One is putting up a fight, the other caved in. (For decades, Autodesk did not bother to register DWG, as it did with DXF. Now that it is attempting to register DWG, Autodesk is dealing with an unsympathetic USPTO. For the trademark office will not register file extensions as trademarks. For instance, OpenDGN was recently rejected by the USPTO, because "open" is too generic and "dgn" is a file extension.) This leads to me to wonder, "What does USPTO have against file extensions as registered trademarks?" Perhaps because you cannot place that encircled R after the .dwg in File Explorer. For then it is no longer .dwg, but .dwg(R).
SolidWorks' DWG-names In September 2006, Autodesk petitioned the USPTO to deregister DWGGateway and DWGEditor, names of software products SolidWorks Corp employs to lure AutoCAD users to SolidWorks software. In reaction, SolidWorks countered that DWG is a generic abbreviation for "drawing" and has been used that way for 60 years. [No proof was provided for the 60-year claim.] As well, SolidWorks lawyer noted, DWG is a generic extension for digital files. [I would say 'not unique', rather than 'generic'.] Autodesk countered that SolidWorks itself uses DWG non-generically: their DWG-named products are marketed specifically to AutoCAD users and/or for drawings created in AutoCAD. By March, the two were at loggerheads. When Autodesk attempted to register DWGX and RealDWG, SolidWorks opposed the move. When Autodesk complained to the USPTO that SolidWorks had failed to produced all the documents necessary for discovery, SolidWorks said it had complied. Autodesk persisted, stating it wanted the following kinds of documents:
Some of Autodesk's 49 demands for documents seem excessive to me, such as "#25: Documents sufficient to identify the number of Internet users who have reviewed any web pages from your sites showing DWGGATEWAY." Perhaps not too excessive for lawyers charging Autodesk by the hour for reading tonnes of paperwork. And then there's the 34 Interrogatories Autodesk wants SolidWorks to answer, such as #33: "Identify each person who has attended a trade show or conference during which that person marketed, promoted, or advertised products or features featuring DWGGATEWAY." Naturally, SolidWorks objected to many of the demands for documents and interrogatories as irrelevant or unreasonable, or just not in their possession. For example, SolidWorks said they never featured just DWGGateway at a trade show. Autodesk lawyers countered that this was "difficult to understand" and "very limiting." Well, responded SolidWorks, Autodesk's demands for documents regarding AutoCAD and DWGSeries are "simply irrelevant" to a case that concerns itself with DWGGateway and DWGEditor. [We seen Autodesk use the same tactic against ODA: start a case against one or two DWG-terms, and then broaden it to encompass to just about anything related to AutoCAD.] The documents posted at USPTO provide some insider info you'd never read anywhere else, such as data listing where, when, and how much SolidWorks spent on advertising. (Fame: upFront.eZine gets listed.) For example, over $16,000 was spent with Google AdSense on the keyword "DWG," but less than $1,000 on "DWGGateway" and related terms. Clearly, DWG is important -- but not to the USPTO.
softelect RasterDWG As for softelec, the company continues to use "RasterDWG" after Autodesk halted its USPTO proceedings in March 2008 against the raster-to-vector software company. "softelec and Autodesk have mutually agreed on the use of the RasterDWG trademark," softelect told me, but would not provide more details due to non-disclosure terms in the agreement. I suspect the German company simply didn't have the funds to battle a multi-billion dollar opponent. SolidWorks, however, continues the battle, because the DWG file format is key to its ability to continue attracting AutoCAD users. And the ODA continues the battle, because the DWG file format is key to its existence.
DWGextreme Denied The SolidWorks case is scheduled to continue into mid-2009, but it might end sooner. On June 22, the USPTO suspended Autodesk's attempt to register DWG Extreme. The agency's trademark examining attorney gave the following reasons, of which the first three are historically accurate: 1. DWG is a file format.
Rejected by Europeans DWG has been rejected by the European Union's Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market. Some of the reasons given Autodesk include the following:
In summary, I figure Autodesk will fail to register DWG as a trademark in the United States. Their success in other jurisdictions may vary.
Links Autodesk vs SolidWorks: DWG Extreme Denied: EU OHIM The Open Design Alliance releases v2.6 of DWGdirect and DGNdirect. DWGdirect v2.6 adds:
DGNdirect 2.6 adds:
SU Animate 2.0 ($49) is a Ruby program that creates SketchUp v6 scenes automatically from camera paths. Version 2.0 features:
Bunkspeed makes available HyperShot v1.5 ($195 and up) with:
And more. www.bunkspeed.com - - - Autodesk may be shipping Inventor 2009, but it hasn't forgotten 2008 users. Service pack 3 fixes nearly 200 bugs in numerous modules and the API. Download the readme and 20MB update files from usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=11380836&linkID=9242019 Drcauto Software releases Smart Architect 2009 for AutoCAD 2009 ($1395). No-charge demo from www.drcauto.com Adobe ships Acrobat 9, and launches officially the revamped www.acrobat.com portal. Products include Acrobat 9 Standard ($299), Acrobat 9 Pro ($499), and Acrobat 9 Pro Extended ($699). www.adobe.com/acrobat Spatial Corp makes available a new component called "3D Springback," a one-step method for springback correction of 3D models within pressed-metal-tooling manufacturing applications. Eval license avail from ww.spatial.com/content/solutions/3DSpringback VariCAD 2008 v2.0 has a 2D drawing editor that also works in 3D space, and more. Download a 30-day trial version from www.varicad.com/en/home/ - - - These news items were posted during the last week at the WorldCAD Access blog < worldcadaccess.typepad.com>:
Hardware News ATI [err, AMD] ships the ATI Radeon HD 4850 as the first teraFLOPS [floating point operations per second] graphics card. www.amd.com
Seminars & Conferences "It's been 25 years since the inception of PAUG [Philadelphia AutoCAD Users Group], and we are planning a fantastic 25th Anniversary celebration on July 16 that will honor those who helped put the wheels in motion and kept them turning. Please accept this personal invitation to the meeting and special reunion. Visit www.paug.net for more information. Adobe Systems MAX 2008/2009 is:
People/Companies on the Move ASCON Group signs partnership agreement with Usugi Informatyczne SZANSA, a distributor in Poland. www.kompas-3d.pl Hexagon acquires Messtechnik Wetzlar GmbH, developer of QUINDOS software for quality control of complex mechanical parts.
Letters to the Editor Re: Copyright Watch: Wireframe Reproductions "I think the judge's opinion in this case is faulty as a matter of law, and would have a high probability of being overturned on appeal. If the judge's reasoning were to stand, no photographer could claim a copyright in his or her work, as one could similarly argue that every photograph is such an accurate copy of its subject that it contains no original content. The irony or this line of reasoning is that the photographer's copyright in any image is inversely proportional to the accuracy of the subject depicted. "Ford's assertion of 'ownership of any photograph that happened
to include a Ford automobile' is equally (and as patently) absurd.
Toyota holds an unequivocal copyright in the design of its vehicles,
but Meshwerks holds the copyright in the digital image it laborious
created, unless - and this is a major caveat - Meshwerks created
the wireframe under an express or implied Work for Hire agreement,
in which case the copyright belongs to whoever paid them for the
work." The editor replies: "I think it will be overturned."
"Having been in this business for about eight years now, I can tell you with complete certainty that Meshwerks took the right approach [in manually digitizing car bodies, instead of using Toyota's 3D CAD files]. Converting an existing 3D CAD model to something useful for visualization will cost an order-of-magnitude more than creating a visualization model from scratch using measurements and photographs. Two orders-of-magnitude, if you need the resulting model to be low- polygon for Web or real-time use. "The original industrial design models (think Solidworks or Inventor, not PTC) are more usable for visualization applications, however they never match the as-built models and nobody ever goes back to update the industrial design models. "The CAD assembly models tends to have no useful visualization characteristics (material properties, etc.), and are loaded up with gobs of stuff you will never see. "Further, the CAD models tend to be buggy with, for example, multiple copies of the same part in exactly the same place. And, of course, the CAD data is such valuable intellectual property that no manufacturer in his right mind will _ever_ let that leave the building. Particularly when the finish work is going to be done in Eastern Europe. Which it is. Pretty much always. "Does this become a problem for companies who sell wireframes and meshes of recognizable product? The owner of the product now has reason to halt sales or demand royalties. "Yes. Clearly. At least in the 10th circuit, which includes Utah. "I wonder about material properties. They were not done by Meshwerks, so they are not addressed here. But I think the same logic which makes meshes 'mere replicas' would also apply to photo-texturing or photo-realistic shaders. "This could have a _huge_chilling effect on 3D model markets
like TurboSquid. Or think about a company like www.zygote.com/.
I believe that under this decision, their models have no copyright
rights at all in the 10th circuit." The editor replies, "Today a lot of cars are sculpted in Alias, which is pre-CAD, and then that gets used for ads." Mr Smith responds, "But how close is the manufactured car to the original Alias design? I don't know about cars, but in other areas (medical devices and cell phones, specifically), I've been told that the CAD engineers stomp all over the original designs." - - - Re: Open Source CAD "Let's say you could have a free piece of software that worked 99% the same as AutoCAD. The 1% of the time it didn't work (based on a 48-week workyear of 1,840 hours) would equal 18.4 hours of lost productivity. Now let's say your time is worth $30/hour. The cost of the free software is now actually $660 per year in lost productivity, which is more than an AutoCAD subscription. "This explains why those who already own AutoCAD tend to stay with it. And, by the way, I've never seen an AutoCAD opensource framework or clone that comes anywhere near 99% replication; I've followed the market since the Visio CAD days. Bottom line is that time is money, and spending all day fiddling with software that doesn't quite work the way you expect it to doesn't make any sense. "The same logic holds true for Microsoft operating systems,
by the way, but that's another topic for another day." The editor replies: "Thank you for your comments, but Graham Hemingway isn't trying to create another AutoCAD clone. He's writing Wildcat as a 3D modeler to suit himself -- and hopefully a few others. "Your email is correct, however, in explaining why IntelliCAD hasn't taken off as it might have. The ITC and its members should not market it as an AutoCAD clone, but as a 2D CAD package that does a very good job of reading and editing AutoCAD files. "As for Microsoft OSes, I've finally set up an older notebook computer with Linux. Given the hassles I've experienced with Vista (doesn't work with my HP color printer nor Creative MP3 player and is overly restrictive in copying files between computers), I'd be on Linux if it weren't for AutoCAD and PageMaker."
"So has [David Stein] tried progeCAD at all lately?
It has become remarkably stable in the last couple years and offers
everything he's asking for: something like AutoCAD LT but with built-in
features for AutoLISP, VBA (or VSA), and network licensing for under
$1000. http://www.caddit.net/progecad/progecad.php
" - - - Re: To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. "I first heard this on TV a couple of years ago from the
recently-deceased George Carlin. Pending other evidence, it should
probably be attributed to him although he may have said 'To me'
rather than 'To the engineer'." - - - "I just saw that Autodesk acquired Ecotect, the environmental
simulation software I use daily. Future merging with Revit would
make a dream package for architects."
"Your ezine is great reading as ever."
Spin Doctor of the Moment "...the Cinema 2.0 experience... punches a sizeable hole
in the sensory barrier that separates today's visionary content
creators and the interactive experiences they desire to create for
audiences around the world."
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