Adobe systems

It was founded in December 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in Mountain View , California. They founded Adobe after leaving Xerox PARC in order to continue developing PostScript and make commercial profits from it. The name comes from Adobe Creek - a stream in California, lying between the towns of Palo Alto and Mountain View .

In June 2014, the company introduced the Ink pen and the Slide line ^[8] .

Since 2011, Adobe sued in a collective case with employees, in the surrounding court of San Jose in the case of employees against Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe Systems ^{[9] [10] [11]} . The companies entered into a secret agreement between themselves, according to which they will not hire each other's employees from 2004 to 2009 in order to restrain wage growth, such a restriction contradicts antitrust standards ^{[9] [10]} . The class action lawsuit was from 64,410 employed and previously employed employees of these companies ^{[9] [10] [11]} . The defendants claim that the salaries of these employees increased during this period and the interaction between the companies did not have negative consequences for the salaries ^[10] .

The respondent companies proposed to resolve the matter in the pretrial order by paying 325 million US dollars to the plaintiffs, which the plaintiffs' lawyers agreed to, but the judge rejected this proposal, considering “an amount below reasonable limits ^{[9] [10]} that this should be a minimum of 380 million dollars when the plaintiffs themselves demanded 3 billion dollars ^{[9] [10]} . Lucy Koch points out that a similar precedent with Pixar Animation Studios, Lucasfilm, and Intuit in 2013 implies a no lesser level of reward ^[10] . The proposal suggested that the attorneys' fee would be $ 8 million, and the victims would receive $ 5,000 each ^[10] . Stephen Perlman, a partner at Proskauer Rose Law Firm, expressed concern that the judge demanded an increase in the amount of money at a time when the plaintiffs council could still “lose the case and get nothing at all” ^[10] .

During the court hearing, Koch, announcing the decision, drew attention to the fact that Apple was the initiator of the secret agreement, namely, Steve Jobs was actually the central figure of the conspiracy, according to which employees could not go on promotion to another company for a higher salary ^{[9] [10 ] ]} . The court considered his correspondence and Eric Schmidt - co-founder of Google ^[11] .

In September 2015, the court approved a settlement, for which the plaintiff’s lawyers spent 36,215 paid hours and 3.2 million pages of legal documents ^[11] . The settlement agreement prescribed to pay the plaintiffs 415 million US dollars, halve the fee for lawyers (compared with the invoice) and at that expense to increase employee benefits by $ 700, up to $ 5,700 ^[11] .

Kevin Lynch, the technology director, joined the company in 2005 and participated in the development of cloud products and promoted the idea of ​​multi-screen services ^[12] . March 22, 2013 Kevin joined Apple to develop cloud products according to the distribution model for the subscription model ^[12] .

In September, Adobe asked the European Commission to prohibit Microsoft from embedding in the Vista OS free software for creating and reading electronic documents in XPS format, which could negatively affect sales of Adobe programs that perform the same tasks, but are not free ^[13] .

In April 2005, Adobe Systems announced the purchase of Macromedia, after which the shares of the latter rose 33.45 to 39.37 US dollars ^[14] .

Other acquisitions:

• Aldus Corp. 1994
• Frame Technology 1995
• GoLive Systems, 1999
• Accelio, 2002
• Syntrillium, May 2003
• Macromedia Inc. 2005
• Business Catalyst , 2009
• EchoSign , 2011 ^[15] .
• Allegorithmic, 2019 ^{[16] [17]}

As of February 2010, there were 9117 employees at Adobe Systems , most of whom work in San Jose. The company has large branches in Seattle (Washington), Noida ( India ) and Ottawa ( Canada ). Less important branches are located under Minneapolis ( Minnesota ) and in Hamburg ( Germany ).

The company is a leading manufacturer of software for graphic design, publishing, web and print products with annual revenues approaching $ 4 billion.

On April 19, 2005, the company bought Macromedia Inc., a leader in web and multimedia development . for 3.41 billion dollars.

Education Support in Russia

In 2007, the Minister of Information Technologies and Communications Leonid Reiman agreed with Adobe and several other companies to counter intellectual property violations in Russian schools ^[18] . Adobe set the price for using one license per year for the Adobe Photoshop graphics package at $ 10 ^[18] . Pavel Cherkashin, head of the Adobe Systems representative office in Russia and the CIS, assured that the company supports education in this way and does not earn in this way ^[18] .

A few months later, Adobe announced the pilot of the Creative Suite 2.3 Premium student software package (which includes Photoshop) ^[19] .

Adobe Systems has moved from a perpetual license sales model to leasing cloud services through the sale of a subscription to Adobe Creative Suite ^[20] .

According to the newspaper Vedomosti, in the company more experienced employees train the cybersecurity of their colleagues ^[21] . Successful teachers are awarded with special points that can be converted into air miles, parking time, clothing, or to study outside the company ^[21] .

Until 2016, the company used numerical ratings in systems for monitoring and evaluating employee performance; management abolished them, believing that evaluations increase employee anxiety ^{[22] [23]} .

The company supports part-time employees, seeing in this the prospect of innovation ^[24] .

In December 2015, Fellowship Filtering Technologies sued Adobe Systems due to patent infringement by Gary Robinson, who in 1999 chose an automatic filtering system that collects and stores data about the behavior of Internet users. The system allows users to recommend products based on the preferences of other users with similar tastes that were recorded by the system ^[25] .

Due to the rather high price of products, the company had to deal with the problem of piracy. A large number of private users use non-original software, due to its wide availability.

In the early 2000s, Adobe stopped fighting piracy in Russia, although police seized pirated discs from the company's software ^[26] .

In 2005, the company estimated that its sales should be at least 5 million US dollars per year, but due to pirated copies this profit was lost ^[27] . To solve the problem, Adobe began sending out letters to company executives, warning about possible failures in pirated products and the unseemly goals of selling pirated products. The company runs a campaign, believing that the use of illegal software is a consequence of uninformed users ^[27] .

In 2012, 27% of all criminal cases under article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Violation of copyright and related rights” were from Adobe ^[28] . In 2015, Adobe representatives supported 719 criminal cases related to the theft of the company's programs ^[28] .

In March 2014, Igor Slabykh, the head of the department for counteracting intellectual piracy in Russia and the CIS, said that Adobe would no longer seek criminal cases for piracy of its programs in Russia ^[28] . This is due to the dismissal of the department. Just fired employees, phoning companies with warnings about the risks of using illegal software ^[28] . Dismissals occurred due to falling sales in the country ^[28] . At the same time, the anti-piracy actions of the BSA and the Russian Non-Profit Partnership of Software Product Suppliers (NP PPP) are not suspended ^[28] .

Adobe vs. Elcomsoft

On June 20, 2001, the Russian company Elcomsoft launched the Advanced eBook Processor program to bypass Adobe’s Advanced eBook Processor program protection against illegal copying and converted the book file to PDF without actually hacking ^{[29] [30] [31]} . In July 2001, Dmitry and Andrey Malyshev, the developers of the program, made a report at DEF CON-9, the next day they were detained by FBI agents, following a complaint by Daryl Spano, a representative of the anti-piracy division of Adobe Systems ^{[32] [30] [31] [29 ] ]} . In the process of developing the case, Adobe withdrew the complaint and the US Department of Justice began to act as the prosecutor. .

Anti-Piracy Units and Associations

Adobe Systems is a member of the Business Software Alliance (BSA) committee, which also addresses the issue of piracy ^[33] .

In 2009, Adobe Systems for the illegal distribution of software achieved the imprisonment of two Muscovites for one and a half and two years in prison and a fine of 10,000 Russian rubles in favor of the state for the totality of violations identified, including counterfeit cinema ^[34] . In total, in the II quarter of 2009, the Investigative Committee, as a result of inspections, opened 153 criminal cases regarding the sale and installation of unlicensed Adobe software ^[34] . Total lost profits exceed half a million ^[34] .

Adobe is actively struggling with the distribution of unlicensed software and is ready to support the involvement of individuals who knowingly violate copyrights, not only civil but also criminal liability

- Head of Adobe Anti-Piracy Division Ekaterina Gromova ^[34]

In 2010, the BSA filed an application with the Russian police to check on LG, which used unlicensed software ^[33] . Even after submitting the application, LG did not license the software, and as a result of the check, 43 Photoshop programs, 25 Acrobat Reader, and three Adobe Illustrator were found worth about 60,000 US dollars ^[33] .

• Adobe Systems, Inc.
• Adobe in Russia
• Arseny Tarasov, Head of Adobe Russia // Analytical program "Runetology"
• Adobe has closed a representative office in Russia // Vedomosti