Another day, another lawsuit. Free FreeHand (http://www.freefreehand.org), an organization dedicated to the late, lamented (by many) vector drawing application, is suing Adobe for "killing" FreeHand.

FreeHand was made by Macromedia, which Adobe purchased in 2003. In time Adobe phased out FreeHand as well as Macromedia's GoLive web site creation tool in favor of its own (and competing) Illustrator and Dreamweaver products.

Here's the goal of the Free FreeHand Organization: "We want FreeHand to have a future. Not only because we love to work with it, but also because we have thousands of files from the past we may need access to on any given occasion (well, they open in AI, but are converted into chaos). Our wish is a simple one: For those who still use FreeHand today (and don't want to use Illustrator, possible reasons for which are myriad) the application must be brought up to date and maintained, i.e. known bugs fixed and made to work natively on current operating systems. We don't believe this is asking too much."

The organization has filed a civil antitrust complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Adobe. The suit alleges that Adobe has violated federal and state antitrust laws by abusing its dominant position in the professional vector graphic illustration software market.

Free FreeHand alleges that Adobe has engaged in a series of exclusionary and anticompetitive acts and strategies designed to kill FreeHand, the dominant competitor to Adobe’s Illustrator software product, instead of competing on the basis of product merit according to the principals of free market capitalism.

Free FreeHand demands that Adobe be permanently enjoined from engaging in acts of monopolization and that competitive conditions be restored in the marketplace. Requests for information or questions may be directed to their legal counsel:

Jared H. Beck, Esq.
Elizabeth Lee Beck, Esq.
Beck & Lee Business Trial Lawyers
66 W. Flagler St. Suite 1000
Miami, FL 33130
ph: (305) 789-0072
jared@beckandlee.com
elizabeth@beckandlee.com

-- Dennis Sellers