Macromedia, a maker of Web-design software, said Friday that a jury had awarded it damages of $4.9 million in a patent-infringement suit against Adobe Systems, one of several legal disputes between the two companies.
Macromedia's lawsuit arose from a patent-infringement action brought against the San Francisco-based company by Adobe. On May 2, Adobe said it was awarded damages of $2.8 million in that lawsuit, which dealt with different patents than those covered by Macromedia's counterclaim.
"The score is now Adobe-1, Macromedia-1, customers-0," Rob Burgess, Macromedia's chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. The company declined further comment through a representative.
Macromedia's counterclaims were based on three patents the company said were infringed by Adobe's Illustrator, a graphics program, and Adobe Premiere, a video-editing tool.
Adobe's original suit was based on its patents for technology used to display multiple sets of information on the same area of a computer screen. On Friday, Macromedia said it intended to appeal the verdict in that case.
Still another patent-infringement lawsuit, filed in October 2001 by Macromedia against Adobe, is scheduled to go to trial in June 2003. That suit is related to patents for Web authoring and the creation of tables within documents and Web pages.
Officials at San Jose, Calif.-based Adobe could not immediately be reached for comment.
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