RPost, a maker of electronic signature technology, has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Adobe Systems for the technology Adobe acquired in buying EchoSign.
RPost has
filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Adobe Systems and EchoSign,
which Adobe just acquired.
On July 19,
RPost, the inventor of Registered Email services and a self-proclaimed pioneer
of electronic signature services, announced that it has brought suit against
Adobe related to the electronic signature services provided by EchoSign, which Adobe announced it acquired on
July 18, 2011.
RPost has
determined that EchoSign's electronic signature services are based on RPost
patented technology. Thus RPost has brought suit for infringing five of RPost's
U.S. patents-patent numbers 6,182,219; 6,571,334; 7,707,624; 7,865,557 and
7,966,372. RPost has asked the U.S. federal court to issue an injunction
against Adobe to prevent further damages.
"Electronically
signing a document is not difficult," said Zafar Khan, CEO of RPost, in a
statement. "Just typing your name at the bottom of a document or email can have
all the legal force of a handwritten signature if all parties have proof that
you are the author of the specific content. But if you don't have that proof,
then electronic signing is legally worthless. The key element in any system of
electronic signature is creating a legally meaningful audit trail of every step
of the signature process and associating that audit trail with particular
electronic document content. When part of that audit trail involves email, it
is on our turf: We pioneered the technology for proof of email and document
delivery, including recording recipient reply or signoff on the message content,
and have the patents to prove it."
RPost
claims that its electronic signature and Registered
Email services provide senders with legally valid, court admissible evidence of email content,
timestamp and delivery, with options to record the recipient's consent to
attached contracts with legal electronic signatures.
RPost was
founded in 2000 and has 35 patents that have priority over technology dating
back to 1995, the company said. These patents broadly cover the technologies of
verifiable proof for email delivery, recording recipient consent associated
with received messages and documents, and value-added outbound email
processing, RPost officials said.
Adobe
officials said EchoSign's electronic signature solution will be a key component
of the company's document exchange services platform for reliably exchanging
documents for universal access, review and approval.
EchoSign's
solution supports more than 3 million users, Adobe said. The solution will be
offered as part of Adobe's online document exchange services platform and will
be integrated with other Adobe document services, including SendNow
for managed file transfer, FormsCentral for form creation and CreatePDF
for online PDF creation.
"Adobe's
document solutions help organizations turn inefficient, paper-based workflows
into streamlined electronic ones," said Kevin M. Lynch, vice president and
general manager of Acrobat Solutions and Digital Enterprise
Solutions at Adobe, in a statement. "By adding electronic signature
capabilities to Adobe's document exchange services platform, we will be
addressing the need to provide better customer experiences by significantly
reducing the time, cost and complexity associated with having a document
signed."
Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.
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