Attached Link: http://articles.corporate.findlaw.com/articles/file/firms/bm/bm000002

"derivative knocks offs" (the body suit, I presume) was a concern regarding the content of a file, not the format; you're confusing the issue between the two. Tell you what: Ask Curious Labs how much they pay in license fees for importing .dxf (AutoCAD) format, VRML (W3C consortium?), or .obj (Alias Wavefront) format, etc etc. (.3ds to my knowledge is an export format opened by Discreet to the public for portability and promotional reasons.) Not only that, but .obj format is the one format upon which most of Poser's proprietary formats are based... but still, I'll bet they pay absolutely nothing to import those formats. Given all this, and according to your own logic of the situation, Poser has been stealing, say, AutoCAD's intellectual property for years now. OTOH, I can still contend that they have not. Ask Openoffice.org how much they pay Microsoft for the ability to import Word documents... the answer there is "zero" as well. WordPerfect pays nothing to open .doc files, nor does Microsoft pay anything to open .wpd files. Lotus and Borland have been at it, same results... and here are specific cites that back me up on this: [ First](http://www.findlaw.com/01topics/10cyberspace/multimedia/gov_laws.html) [ Second](http://www.findlaw.com/01topics/10cyberspace/licensing/sites.html) [ Third](http://articles.corporate.findlaw.com/articles/file/articles/cblh/cblh000002/title/Subject/topic/Entertainment%20%20Sports%20Law_Art%20Law/filename/entertainmentsportslaw_1_161) A fourth, and more layman-legible version, is up top of this post. Jeff, these are all real-life (and very visible, and very much ruled-upon) examples here. What more do you require for me to convince you that opening a .pz3 file in something else besides Poser is perfectly legal? /P

Perhaps when were all doing it in the new DAZ app, which I am confident we all will be.

If the new app loads old figures from Poser that easily there may be a problem. It's called theft.<<< Well, the weight of court precedence states otherwise. Others and I have quoted actual court cases in other threads, but these seem to go into one orifice and out the other so I will not waste time repeating what has already been repeated often enough. However, Curious Labs may want to spend its time trying to make good on its advertised, promoted and publicly stated promises in regard to ----- - instead of trying to intimidate with threats of legal challenges. Actually, CL may want to spend ALL its time with ----- - so as to avoid its own legal problems. Time and patience is running out. CL is in more legal danger with ----- - than any potential competitor would be with an app than can read and/or write .cr2 or .pz3 files. Another PR disaster and CL could discover how much danger they truly are in. Payback and declaratory judgments can be costly and very painful. One has to remember that copyright law is not in place to create and protect a monopoly in the marketplace. The courts have made that quite clear over the years. Take care and be well. casamerica

For those of you who have not read the discussion on PP, or for one reason or another cannot/do not want to join PP to view it, I will crosspost my posts in which I discussed the legality issues: === Although IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer; not I'm ANAL), I had a situation a few years back that forced me to delve into similar discussions with a previous employer; hence my involvement in copyright and other legalities. Some of the basic facts: 1. Poser files are ASCII text and editable/readable by any number of applications; therefore one cannot determine if Poser or another application wrote the files. 2. Spatial coordinates cannot be copyrighted; as anyone could, per happenstance, come up with the same coordinates. 3. Program interoperability is a legal usage of "reverse engineering"; enacted, primarily, to limit the ability to create a monopolistic stronghold on users by one software developer. 4. Poser files primarily contain data that is not covered by copyright law (ref: Section 102(b)); in essence, they are "processes" or "procedures" to manipulate geometric meshes according to standard mathematical formulae. 5. Most Poser geometries are commonplace items, (ie, biological figures, geometric shapes, etc) that are unprotected designs according to copyright law (ref: Section 1302). 6. The existence of other third party applications and utilities that are allowed to access the Protected File Formats without copyright enforcement by CL; although these are "helper applications", the mere fact that CL has allowed others to use their Protected File Formats without prosecution in the past could be used against CL by any software developer. (ie, CL has failed to enforced its own perceived copyright protection, thereby setting the precedence that usage by third-party applications is an acceptable use.) When taking all of these things into consideration, one can see where the copyrightability and/or enforcement, if applicable, of the Poser files comes into question. IMHO, there would be enough for a case against CLs' copyright claims for a court to decide that the Protected File Formats do not constitute copyrightable material and, therefore, cannot be protected under copyright law. === [T]rademarks are usually specific graphics, symbols, words, etc, used to identify one product from another, (ie, Coca-Cola's name and the designs of the can and bottles). A case of trademark infringement that happened recently (December 1994) that I know of was Coke's use of a polar bear in its advertising. Of course, Polar Beverages, having a Polar bear (Orson) as it's trademark, sought to stop the Coke ads. IIRC, the outcome was that Polar could not claim Coke was infringing trademark due to the differences of the likenesses of the polar bears, or somesuch. (I cannot find an online version of the case, sorry.) The point I am making is that I doubt that CL could even trademark the Proprietary File Format extensions and, therefore, have no real legal recourse to stop third parties from using the files or formats based upon copyright, patent, and/or trademark grounds. IMHO, none of the above protections could be proven sufficiently to which a court would find a competitor infringing upon any protected material of CLs'. So, basically, CL seems to be SOL in trying to enforce any of these protections. The only thing that keeps competitors from using the files/formats seems to be out of respect for CL; which is not an entirely bad thing. === I have left out the other posts in the thread, because I believe that is the discretion of the people who posted whether they want their posts cross-posted here. Discuss away... ;0)

"Poser and it's formats are unique. There are no other formats like it." Ah. I see Cyber and Pengy have all ready been at that one. They're ASCII text files with a new extension. If you re-extension them to *.txt, any text editor opens them and resaves them with no loss or garble. "When you import a Pz3 into Pov ray you lose all ability to pose it. With the DAZ' "PoseIt" app if it keeps all functionality it's theft IMO." The 3D Spatial coordinates and the vertex inormation belong to the figure, as do the xyz rotation etc parameters. All the importing app needs is it's own unique translation routine for converting that data into bend, twist, deform and repositioning, and "wallah" - no theft. Both character studio and messiah have that capability on obj & 3ds mesh, the ability to deform and "pose" a mesh is not unique to poser. I think that what you're saying Jeff is ethical as opposed to legal or program capable, just not stating it that way, and that's a different question entirely.

True dat. OTOH, I'm not even sure about the ethics - after all, any programmer would be a complete fool to not include import capabilities for as much stuff as he/she can, especially when you're creating a brand new program from scratch. Besides, the result will be a real nice competition between the two, and that in and of itself can be a good thing... for those of us who use these programs, anyhow. /P

Ah. Yeah... I don't have an opinion either way on the ethics of it - like you and cyber, just on the legal/technical. I was just observing that that maybe where JeffH was coming from "ethically theft, even if it's not illegal". Competitionwise, may not even be detrimental to either app to have the ability to read each others files: it's doesn't hurt either Word or WP to be able to open and read each others documents, nor does it hurt Quattro and Excel. It broadens the usage of both sets of tools, just as the "Open DWG" standards in architecural apps isn't killing off AutoCad anytime soon [in spite of Autodesk's initial paranoia] by making it simpler for other CAD apps to use a standardized *.dwg exchange format. Autodesk isn't going out of business because of it, neither is Corel because Excel will open a Quattro doc.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=970361

Err, speak of the devil, you may want to check the critter out :)

Yeah. Been there already. ;] Linked it in Radio Free also. ;]