Its not surprising that Adobe Systems is worried about Microsofts growing encroachments into its core markets. But now Adobe is said to be ready to take its dissatisfaction to the courts.
The Wall Street Journal reported on June 2 that Adobe is poised to launch an antitrust suit in Europe against Microsoft, following the breakdown of four-month-long talks over Microsofts Office 2007 PDF plans.
Microsoft announced in October 2005 that it was building into Office 2007 a PDF export capability, following requests for such a feature by its customers. But according to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft is now planning to remove that feature, at the request of Adobe. Adobe also sought to get Microsoft to charge for the export-to-PDF capability, but so far Microsoft is not planning to do so, according to the Journal.
Microsoft and Adobe officials did not respond to a request for comment on the Wall Street Journal report by the time this article was published.
Microsoft was not planning to embed a PDF reader into Office 2007. Instead, Microsoft is integrating its own PDF/Postscript competitor, known as the XML Paper Specification, or XPS, into Windows Vista. The Wall Street Journal story did not mention XPS as a bone of contention between the two companies.
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