Adobe Meets with In-plant Representatives

Adobe executives received a virtual slap in the face from the printing industry at a meeting in its San Francisco facility last week. Almost a dozen print industry executives, including two representatives of the university in-plant sector, made the trip to northern California for the forum, while about the same number participated via a conference link. Top management from most of the major quick print firms (excluding Kinko’s) took part.

Adobe had organized the meeting to give the print industry a chance to air its grievances against the PDF creator for tacking a link to FedEx Kinko’s onto the latest versions of Reader and Acrobat.

Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen sincerely apologized for what he acknowledged was a major goof, while those at the meeting made it clear that the only acceptable remedy would be the immediate removal of the Kinko’s link. Still, in comments after the meeting, Adobe promised only to “reevaluate the implementation of the FedEx Kinko’s service in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader,” causing some to wonder if Adobe executives had attended a different meeting. The company’s chief concern seemed to be that removing the link would breach its contract with FedEx Kinko’s.

In-plant representatives Tom Tozier and Ray Chambers brought up some concerns others hadn’t considered, such as the potential copyright violations that could be fostered through the use of this link and the fact that a direct link to one vendor circumvents an in-plant’s need to get multiple quotes on a job.

After the meeting, Adobe said it would explore options of making print service providers more discoverable in Adobe’s creative products, and investigate the ability for printers to distribute a branded plug-in to their customers.

Concerned that Adobe may have missed their point, NAPL and NAQP reiterated their position in a letter to the company three days after the meeting: “Adobe should extricate itself from the agreement and remove the FedEx Kinko’s logo and embedded link from Adobe software in a timely manner.”

Adobe promised to announce its official action plan by August 1, five days from now.