Adobe’s Open Reach Development and Open Innovation Concept

Aug. 9, 2012 - PRLog -- Legal IQ: Hello, and welcome to this IQPC podcast presented by Legal IQ in conjunction with the forthcoming Sixth Annual Patent Congress. The Patent Congress is due to take place this September. Today we're joined by Dave McAllister, Director of Open Source at Adobe Systems. We've got in this call Mikk Putk, Patent Attorney, Patent searcher and Partner at Sarap & Partners Patent Agency, also owner of the IP Insiders blog, together with Stephen Jenei, Editor in Chief of Patent Baristas Blog and Patent Attorney and Owner of Jenei LLC.

Now, if you'd all like to maybe introduce yourselves and give a brief overview of your current responsibilities at the moment. So first let's start with Dave. Just tell us a little bit about your current role and remit.

D McAllister: Hi. I'm Dave McAllister. I'm the Director of Open Source, as was announced, for Adobe Systems. I've been with Adobe for about six years and have seen a number of changes happen during this period time in Adobe's use of both open source and open development. I also manage accessibility, so I deal with a lot of policy from that side, and deal with a number of the standards organizations here as well, so I get to spend a lot of time worrying about the topics of today's conference.

Legal IQ: Yes. Great introduction. Thank you. And, Mikk, if you'd just like to give a brief overview of what you're responsible for at the moment.

M Putk: Hello, everybody. Greetings from rainy Estonia. I'm an Estonian patent attorney and partner of small patent agency. We work mainly with local technology companies and start-ups and we help to protect intellectual property in Estonia and abroad. Thank you.

Legal IQ: Thanks very much, Mikk. And finally, Stephen, if you'd just like to introduce yourself to the listeners.

Stephen Jenei: Yes. I'm Stephen Jenei. I'm the owner of Jenei LLC, which is a patent and intellectual property law firm, and also the Editor of Patent Baristas, a blog on intellectual property issues.

Legal IQ: Thank you. It's great to have all three of you here today. Now, let's just give an overview of what we're going to discuss. We're going to cover Adobe's open innovation system first and foremost and also the ongoing debate versus the Adobe Flash Player and HTML5. Then we'll move onto Adobe's open screen Project and the impact and reach of open development that Adobe's embracing, such as Flex, Brackets and the PhoneGap. So to start, let's turn to Mikk, who's going to open with a couple of questions. Mikk, over to you.

M Putk: Yes. Very well. Can you please explain at first Adobe's open innovation concept?

D McAllister: Great. So Adobe is a company that has always been built on innovation, and innovation for Adobe over the last 25 years is ultimately led by internal discoveries and internal activities and projects. What has happened over the last decade is that it's clear that building innovation is easier in an open environment where all participants can play in an equal sense and provide ideas and concepts. The value that we really see in open is that you often get ideas that don't come from your traditional side because they're things that internal people don't think of. Fringe items sometimes end up being far more powerful than what the traditional engineers would think of.

So for Adobe, open innovation means that we make sure that anyone can take part in a project, and when it makes sense we move projects to external entities and work with external parties to build platforms and frameworks that make the overall value better for everybody. I use this phrase that we like to return more value than we receive in the open space. We are building on things, so we want to make sure that we give back more than we get.

M Putk: Can you explain also the borders of openness?

D McAllister: Openness is... sorry, I'll get off my soapbox for a minute, or on my soapbox. Open is one of those phrases that's been so diluted over the last couple of years that I'm quite often worried about using the word open these days. But for us, open is the exchange and sharing of ideas and information in such a manner that all people can use it. And believe it or not, this is something that's been in Adobe's roots since the formation of the PDF specification 1.0 back in 1993, when we released the spec and said, feel free to use this any way you want to, build anything you want to with it, and, by the way, here are the essential patents and you have the right to use those in perpetuity irrevocable without charge.

So open becomes real important in this sense because it enables the development of a vibrant ecosystem. Again using PDF as an example, and my team is the one that took PDF and made it into an ISO standard, (thus PDF literally is no longer owned by Adobe. It's actually one of the international standards being driven through the ISO 32000 specification.) But we see things come up that no-one else would have thought of because we, Adobe have a specific focus, but other people can build products that may have a different focus. And open innovation for PDF means thousands of companies make use of PDF. And literally in the open source sense there are hundreds of products that are built using the PDF specification for openness.

To download the full interview, please click here: http://www.patentcongress.com/Event.aspx?id=721840&utm_ca... &utm_medium=HWOnline&utm_source=PR Log&MAC=HW_WP_19724.002_PRL


The 6th Annual Global Patent Congress will take place 24th – 26th September 2012 at the Mogens Dahl Concert Hall, Copenhagen, Denmark. For information please visit www.patentcongress.com, email enquire@iqpc.co.uk or call 0207 368 9300.