Autodesk and Open Design Alliance Reach Agreement for Autodesk DWG Trademarks

SAN RAFAEL, Calif. & PHOENIX - Autodesk, Inc and the Open Design Alliance (ODA) announced an agreement to settle pending disputes related to Autodesk’s DWG Trademark. Autodesk initiated proceedings with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) in 2007 to cancel the ODA’s DWG-based trademark registrations to avoid confusion with Autodesk’s established DWG brand and trademark. The ODA has agreed to cancel its DWG-based trademark registrations and cease use of DWG and DWG-based trademarks in its product marketing and branding, and Autodesk has agreed to withdraw the cancellation proceedings with the TTAB. The settlement does not preclude ODA from developing interoperable software or from using the .dwg extension in its file names. Terms and conditions of the settlement agreement are confidential.

“We are pleased to have reached this agreement with the ODA so we can move beyond our DWG trademark disputes,” said Amar Hanspal, Senior Vice President, Autodesk Platform Solutions and Emerging Businesses. “This settlement is reflective of both parties’ continuing focus on interoperability for 2D and 3D design, engineering and entertainment software users.”

Arnold van der Weide, President of the ODA stated, “The ODA is pleased that we are able to reach this settlement with Autodesk and turn our focus from the legal arena to the development of our TEIGHA software development platform which, among other things, is designed to work with Autodesk’s DWG file format.”

DWG is the name of Autodesk’s proprietary file format and technology used in AutoCAD software and other products, including the recently released AutoCAD 2011 and RealDWG 2011, and is an Autodesk trademark. Autodesk does not prevent others from either using .dwg as a file extension or from making software that is compatible with the Autodesk DWG file format. However, certain uses of DWG as a trademark are not permissible, so this settlement focuses on avoiding customer confusion by non-Autodesk products’ use of DWG as a trademark without prior permission from Autodesk.