Adobe’s EchoSign Acquisition Includes Bonus Patent Infringement Suit
Adobe’s recent acquisition of electronic signatures company EchoSign has had some unforseen legal consequences. On Tuesday, RPost, another electronic signature services company, filed suit against both Adobe and EchoSign claiming they’ve violated its intellectual property.
In a complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, RPost alleges that Adobe and EchoSign have infringed patent numbers 6,182,219; 6,571,334; 7,707,624; 7,865,557 and 7,966,372, which cover a variety of systems and methods a third party would employ to prepare a verifiable record of an electronic transaction with the record including such things as an audit trail, association of the message or document content to the audit trail, and/or indications of receipt.
Evidently, RPost had been discussing “a collaborative product alliance” with Adobe when the company turned around and acquired EchoSign, which RPost had been planning to sue. “We did not anticipate Adobe’s acquisition of EchoSign,” RPost CEO Zafar Khan told PC World. “Since they chose to acquire the technology that we deemed to infringe, we included Adobe in the suit.”
RPost is asking the court for a permanent injunction against both companies, as well as damages and attorneys fees. The complaint in full, below.
