Markzware Sues Artwork, Enfocus for Patent Infringement

By: E&P Staff Privately held Markzware, Santa Ana, Calif., has announced that it filed a lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles against Artwork Systems Group N.V. and Artwork Systems N.V., Ghent, Belgium, and Artwork subsidiary Enfocus Software Inc., Encino, Calif.

The suit alleges that products made and sold by the defendants infringe on the Markzware U.S. Patent No. 5,963,641 for a "Device and method for examining, verifying, correcting and approving electronic documents prior to printing, transmission or recording." The complaint seeks monetary and injunctive relief from all three defendants.

Preflighting described in Markzware's patent "has been used without our consent," Markzware President Patrick Marchese said in a statement. "Accordingly, we plan to protect and defend our patent which is fundamental to our flagship product line, FlightCheck."

Privately held Markzware develops quality-assurance, data-conversion and workflow solutions for the graphic arts, publishing and digital multimedia industries. Its preflight products for digital documents include FlightCheck Professional, FlightCheck Designer, FlightCheck Studio, FlightCheck Workflow and FlightCheck Online.

Last week, prepress software developer Artwork Systems, which develops prepress and color printing preparation software, said it is "conducting a full investigation into what appear to be unsupportable allegations made by Markzware." It said the suit "focuses on two Enfocus software products -- PitStop Professional and PitStop Server," preflighting products that "have been on the U.S. market for many years."

"We do not expect this lawsuit to interfere in any way with Enfocus' ability to continue offering and supporting its popular PDF preflighting products," Artwork Systems Group CEO Peter Denoo said in a statement. Atrwork acquired Enfocus in 2000.