For years the Open Design Alliance (ODA) have been working towards providing an 'open' (i.e. freely distributable) set of libraries and tools capable of reading and writing the DWG file standard. DWG is the default standard within the AutoDesk suite of CAD/CAM applications (the most notable and ubiquitous being AutoCAD). On November 13th 2006 AutoDesk filed a Trademark infringement lawsuit against the Open Design Alliance, apparently around the use of digital watermarks within TrustedDWG files created by the ODA libraries.
TrustedDWG is a digital watermark present within AutoCAD 2007 that ensures the recipient of the file that it was created using genuine AutoDesk software. This functionality has two uses, the marketing reason of course is that it protects customers from the dangers of nasty external programmers who cannot program to save themselves and as a consequence try to destroy your data. This is the marketing reason and like all good marketing reasons it is a completely lame excuse that attempts to cover up real technical issues. The fact of the matter is AutoDesk software is in itself notoriously bad for file corruption. After over five years of tutoring CAD I've seen numerous file corruption incidents and all have involved purely 'genuine' AutoDesk software. Perhaps if AutoDesk engineers were allowed to spend more time on developing a file standard with internal verification systems and less on monopoly protecting digital fingerprints they would not need to worry about third party applications damaging user's data?
