14 DAY TRIAL // Adobe Inc. has gone after the biggest Flash community marketplace in the world. FlashDen, a renowned marketplace for Flash developers where they were able to buy and sell Flash-related products, was recently forced by Adobe to change its name due to a copyright claim. The owners, Australian startup Envato, has changed the service's name to ActiveDen to avoid a major lawsuit from the industry giant.
Entitled to do so or not, Adobe hasn't explained the reasons why it went after FlashDen (sorry, ActiveDen) for the illicit use of the copyrighted and trademark term “Flash” in its title. An argument can be made that thousand of other similar services are out there, using the same term as FlashDen did. For example, FlashComponents or OSFlash.
Meanwhile, Envato managers have quietly conformed to Adobe's request, turning a bad thing in a business opportunity, rechristening the service ActiveDen, in an attempt to make it available for Flash-similar products like Adobe Flex, Adobe Air or Microsoft Silverlight.
“This week Adobe asked us to change our name and URL so that it would no longer contain the term ‘Flash’, which is a registered trademark of Adobe,” said Collis Ta'eed, CEO of Envato, “As of Monday 19th October, FlashDen.net will be changing its name to ActiveDen.net.The new name amends the use of the word Flash, and it also opens up the marketplace for the future.”
For ActiveDen users, these changes will not affect any of the site's structure, expect the URL and logos, everything remaining the same as it was until now. Quickly after the news broke out and the service started redirecting visitors, a harsh reaction toward Adobe was expressed by most of Envato's users on the community discussion board.
Is FlashDen's success something that could or really damper or hurt Adobe that much? We could not reach or conclude to a single reason for Adobe to take this measure only on FlashDen (ActiveDen). If you can come up with something, let us know.