Adobe Systems Inc. has settled the lawsuit brought against the company on October 24, 2001 by Pasadena, California-based Trio Systems L.L.C. The settlement dissolves a preliminary injunction, granted two days ago by A U.S. federal district court judge, involving Adobe’s InDesign 1.5 and InCopy 1.1 products.
The settlement resolves Trio’s issues and Adobe’s counter-claims of fraud and copyright misuse, and allows Adobe to continue to include the disputed C-Index database engine in InDesign 1.5 and InCopy 1.1.
Trio Systems alleged that Adobe incorporated the company’s C-Index database engine into its InDesign software even though it had signed a contract agreeing not to use C-Index in any open programs.
C-Index is a database engine that coordinates the operations of reading and writing data from a computer storage drive, such as a hard drive, according to Trio’s motion. The motion also stated that C-Index provides “core functionality” for InDesign.
“This is a situation that never belonged in court,” said Ray Campbell, Senior Corporate Counsel for Adobe. “We are pleased that we were able to resolve it on a more informal basis.”
Neither of Adobe’s forthcoming products, InDesign 2.0 — due to be released in Adobe’s first quarter of fiscal 2002 — nor InCopy 2.0, which will be released soon after, include C-Index.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but Adobe expects no material impact from it to the Company’s financial results.