Quark suit halts Scitex Visionary sales; Quark continues to press for two-way-open program. (The Latest Word)

Quark suit halts Scitex Visionary sales On February 13, Quark obtained an injunction against Scitex that halts all sales of Visionary, the Scitex-specific version of Quark Xpress.

Scitex's contract with Quark expired last September. The breakdown of renewal negotiations was evident when Scitex filed a lawsuit against Quark in San Francisco in December, although that suit was never tried. Quark responded by filing its own suit against Scitex in Denver in January; at a preliminary hearing in February, the Denver judge ruled solidly in Quark's favor.

Background. The original agreement between Quark and Scitex took place in May, 1988. Scitex and Quark had written a set of Xtensions that let Xpress communicate with Scitex color prepress systems. However, Scitex was not eager to sell the Xtension into the mass market, rightly fearing that it would lead to enormous demands for customer support. So, at Scitex's behest, Quark wrote a special version of Xpress with a different disk file format.

This version of Xpress and the Scitex Xtensions were marketed under the name Visionary. It was a …