Dispute Microsoft-Adobe, Office lost PDF features?

Facing the risk of facing a lawsuit from Adobe, Microsoft said last week it would remove the feature to allow Office 2007 applications to save files in PDF format.

Microsoft's latest move stems from a break in negotiations between Windows and Adobe operating system developers, after Microsoft, late last year, announced it would include support for publishing PDF files in in Office 2007. This feature is one of the features most expected by users, Microsoft said. While other office suite applications support this feature, only Microsoft Office is not.

However, Adobe is not happy with Microsoft's move. Therefore, the dispute has occurred between the two companies for the past four months, Brad Smith - head of Microsoft's lawyer team - said.

Although PDF is an open format standard and has been fully supported by OpenOffice and Mac OS X, Adobe contradicts Office 2007 as a threat to its business.

Adobe wants Microsoft to pay for bringing PDF support into Office. Microsoft bluntly denied this. Lawyer Smith said Adobe threatened to sue Microsoft in Europe. However, Microsoft is prepared to be sued.

No direct support, but instead, Microsoft will provide support for PDF features in Office as an additional feature. Users will be allowed to download this feature through the developer's web.

Along with eliminating the ability to support PDF, Microsoft will also actively remove the XPS format - a format that competes with PDF - in Office 2007 and Windows Vista.

Instead, Microsoft will provide a version of Windows Vista with built-in XPS support - the "Metro" code name. This version was also introduced by Microsoft at TechEd 2006.

Meanwhile, analysts say that the story Microsoft offered is probably incomplete. Adobe has not yet commented on this information and perhaps it does not want to publicly announce its intent to sue.

" I don't think Adobe wants Microsoft to raise Office's cost. Without using free PDF, it means PDF will no longer be an open format standard ," said Jupiter senior analyst. Research Joe Wilcox confirmed.

Meanwhile, Microsoft hopes Adobe will realize that they made a mistake. " Adobe should know they can't sue standard users of open formats ."

Hoang Dung