Creator of Page Control InDesign Plug-In Cheated, Cut Out

Between 2003 and 2006 I cre­at­ed the con­cept, fea­ture list, and sketch­es of the behav­ior & results for an InDesign plug-in that would enable mul­ti­ple page sizes in a sin­gle InDesign doc­u­ment. The plug-in would lat­er be titled Page Control. In 2006 I approached DTP Tools, a mak­er of InDesign plug-ins, with a deal to coop­er­ate on the cre­ation of what would become Page Control. Specifically, I licensed the con­cept and fea­ture list to DTP Tools to code into a func­tion­al plug-in, and togeth­er we would mar­ket the result­ing product.

For the first year, we did just that, and we con­tin­ued to work toward Page Control 2.0, large­ly incor­po­rat­ing fea­tures I had ini­tial­ly want­ed in the release of 1.0, but which tech­ni­cal con­straints pre­vent­ed DTP Tools from cod­ing into 1.0.

In November of 2007, as we were begin­ning work on Page Control 2.0 in earnest, DTP Tools decid­ed to breach our con­tract and infringe on my copy­rights by con­tin­u­ing the sell Page Control with­out com­pen­sa­tion or cred­it to me. Page Control is still on sale to this day, earn­ing rev­enue for DTP Tools but not for its actu­al creator.

Since 2007 all my attempts to open a dia­log with DTP Tools have failed–the com­pa­ny refus­es to acknowl­edge that we even had a busi­ness rela­tion­ship despite the fact that we joint­ly released press releas­es, mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als, and the Page Control soft­ware itself cred­it­ing me as the cre­ator of Page Control.

For two years I pri­vate­ly tried to resolve the mat­ter, but DTP Tools refused to talk to me. Moreover, because DTP Tools is based in Czechoslovakia, I can­not get a U.S. attor­ney to take my case on con­tin­gency despite the over­whelm­ing opin­ion of the numer­ous attor­neys con­sult­ed that the case is “cut and dried” and “an obvi­ous win.” The judg­ment of a court in my favor is all but a fore­gone con­clu­sion. The prob­lem, they say, is that the cost of col­lect­ing on that judg­ment from the Czech com­pa­ny is prohibitive.

Going Public

I real­ly had­n’t planned to talk about this mat­ter pub­licly. Recently, though, it came out quite by acci­dent on the pop­u­lar InDesign Talk mail­ing list from Blueworld. It then became a dia­log (of sorts) with me pro­vid­ing evi­dence that DTP Tools stole my cre­ation, and the DTP Tools CEO and prod­uct man­ag­er reply­ing with “nuh-uh!”

If you’re inter­est­ed, I’ve cre­at­ed a sortable PDF inclu­sive of that dis­cus­sion in its entire­ty. Also with­in the PDF are the links to evi­dence that: A) clear­ly estab­lish­es me as the cre­ator of this pop­u­lar InDesign plug-in; B) attests that I ful­filled all of my oblig­a­tions under the agree­ment with DTP Tools, and; C) DTP Tools breached out con­tract, infringed (and con­tin­ues to infringe) on my copy­rights, and con­tin­ues to sell the Page Control prod­uct with­out com­pen­sa­tion to its cre­ator and licensor.

View the PDF (755 KB)

Unless any­one has an attor­ney with a dif­fer­ent opin­ion and big­ger cajones, I’m out of luck. Goliath steps on David.

I won’t be so naïve as to request a boy­cott on DTP Tools–particularly since my good friend David Blatner has so recent­ly released excel­lent free tools through DTP Tools and they haven’t yet stolen his ideas. However, if you care about fair­play and the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights of cre­ators, I urge you not to buy Page Control from DTP Tools–and per­haps ask your col­leagues not to either. If you recent­ly bought it, maybe you’ll even feel com­pelled to return it for a full refund.

And if not, then I gen­uine­ly hope Page Control helps you, that your work is eas­i­er and more effi­cient because of it. That is why I cre­at­ed the product–to answer a com­mon need among InDesign users and to make work eas­i­er, more effi­cient, and less frus­trat­ing for my fel­low cre­ative and pro­duc­tion pro­fes­sion­als using InDesign.

For ease of use, here are the evi­dence links from the above PDF:

• Selected doc­u­ments prov­ing the busi­ness rela­tion­ship as well as that PSB had Page Control idea and fea­ture list before con­tact­ing DTP Tools
• Page Control instal­la­tion & tuto­r­i­al screens cred­it­ing PSB as creator
• DTP Tools​.com site Oct 2006 cred­it­ing PSB as creator
• Yahoo! Search lead­ing to press releas­es as issued by DTP Tools cred­it­ing PSB as creator
• The Page Control 1.1 Windows installer.
• Page Control Logos (Created by PSB)