Adobe Inventors: Innovation for the Future

2015 was an innovative year at Adobe with 348 patents issued in the U.S. alone and 85 employees receiving their first patent. Oftentimes, these ideas can be patented, and sometimes, employees patent multiple ideas: for the special few who have achieved 10 or more patents at Adobe, they earn recognition as a “Distinguished Inventor.” Seven employees have acquired this distinction in the past two fiscal quarters. Meet a few employees who achieved Distinguished Inventor status in the second half of 2015, and learn about the innovations they’ve contributed to Adobe.

Daniel Brotsky, Cloud Technology, California

What do you currently work on at Adobe?
I work on developing our next-generation commerce capabilities.

What technology have you patented?
Most of my inventions are related to perpetual and subscription licensing, desktop and cloud identity, and subscription commerce. I also have inventions related to tagging metadata and automated layout systems.

Of all your professional achievements at Adobe, what are you most proud of and why?
I am most proud of designing, building and driving the infrastructure that allowed us to move to subscription-based offerings.

What’s next—any new patents/breakthroughs in the near future?
Hopefully more of the same!

Anmol Dhawan, Engineering Manager, Digital Media, Noida

What do you currently work on at Adobe?
I work as an engineering manager for Photoshop Mobile Applications (Photoshop Mix, Photoshop Fix, Photoshop Express) across various platforms.

What technology have you patented?
I have been fortunate to have more than 60 patents approved. Considering that my core work domain has been in imaging applications, many of my patents are related to Photoshop but my interests span other products in Digital Media (Illustrator, InDesign, Premier, Behance, Fotolia) and in Digital Marketing as well (Analytics, Campaign, Target, Adobe Experience Manager, Social). I have many patents across all these products.

Of all your professional achievements at Adobe, what are you most proud of and why?
A few years back, I got the chance to drive the Photoshop Express app from end to end (Product Management, Marketing, Development, Testing, etc.) with a small team. Handling an app with millions of monthly active users was a truly amazing and humbling experience. This experience completely changed my career and opened the door to new experiences for me. I thank Adobe for trusting in my abilities and giving me the opportunity to continue achieving my goals.

What’s next—any new patents/breakthroughs in the near future?
We are working on defining the future of Photoshop on mobile devices with applications like Photoshop Mix and Photoshop Fix, to bring the magic of Photoshop to the masses. A lot of innovation is happening in this space and we have just begun, the future is exciting!

Balaji K., Senior Computer Scientist, Digital Media, Noida

What do you currently work on at Adobe?
I am leading several research projects in the Digital Marketing business unit in the areas of data science, image and video understanding, and natural language processing.

What technology have you patented?
My patents are in the areas of data compression, graphics, computer vision and data science.

Of all your professional achievements at Adobe, what are you most proud of and why?
It is very hard to choose! Each project I was involved with presented very unique technical challenges and the nature of each innovation was unique. But, if you consider longevity as a criterion, I would choose the data compression work I did very early in my career, as it is still being used in virtually the same form after almost 15 years.

What’s next—any new patents/breakthroughs in the near future?
Yes of course! Stay tuned for some exciting applications of imaging and data science in our Digital Marketing products.

Sarah Kong, Principal Scientist, Digital Imaging, San Jose

What do you currently work on at Adobe?
I run the Photoshop tech transfer team which is now called Digital Imaging (DI) tech transfer team. We bring Photoshop magic to our customers by delivering features that leverage cutting edge technologies from Adobe Research Labs.

What technology have you patented?
Many of the patents I co-invented are related to features I worked on in Photoshop. These include Blur Gallery features, Refine Edge dialog and Puppet Warp to name a few.

Of all your professional achievements at Adobe, what are you most proud of and why?
I’m most proud of leading my team in delivering features that not only take advantage of cutting edge technologies but also provide users with an enjoyable and intuitive user experience so that they can focus solely on their creativity. My passion for creating great user experiences combined with years of coding experience inside the Photoshop code base allows me to drive a new breed of tech transfer features that are more cohesive and compelling. One such example is the Blur Gallery feature. With this feature, we created the very first task-focused workspace user interface with on-canvas controls in Photoshop. We are currently utilizing the foundation we laid there for the new “Selection Lab” feature which provides a more streamlined workflow for creating selection and masking in Photoshop.

What’s next—any new patents/breakthroughs in the near future?
My team and I are looking into new technologies from Adobe Research Labs. I believe that there will be no shortage of innovation in our solutions across desktop, mobile, cloud and web.

Gautham Mysore, Principal Scientist, Creative Technologies Lab, San Francisco

What do you currently work on at Adobe?
I develop new audio technology for a variety of applications including voiceovers, music visualization, and audio for video production.

What technology have you patented?
I regularly patent audio technology in all of the application areas in which I work.

Of all your professional achievements at Adobe, what are you most proud of and why?
Being deeply rooted in academia, I am most proud to see algorithms that I develop get used by creative people in the real world and allow them to do things that were simply not possible before.

What’s next—any new patents/breakthroughs in the near future?
I am particularly excited about new technology that I am working on to help people create high quality voiceovers and narration. There’s some exciting work in this space that is likely to come out in the near future.

Randy Swineford, Group Product Manager, Document Cloud Product Management, San Jose

What do you currently work on at Adobe?
I manage a team of product managers responsible for Document Cloud integration with partners and other software companies. Most recently, my team has completed product integrations with Dropbox, Workday and Apttus.

What technology have you patented?
My patents are across many areas including PDF Portfolios, Shared Review, In Product Messaging, Feature A/B Testing and Filling & Signing Forms. A significant number of my patents involve infrastructure we put into Adobe Reader to allow us to test, not only marketing messaging within the product, but to also dynamically update and test new functionality.

Of all your professional achievements at Adobe, what are you most proud of and why?
I have been fortunate to be able to work on some of the most leading edge technologies within Acrobat and the Document Cloud. Taking our innovative technology and turning them into great products with awesome user experiences is what makes me proud – a great example of this is Adobe Fill & Sign.

What’s next—any new patents/breakthroughs in the near future?
I still have 10 more patents pending. One of the areas that is really exciting to me is the ability to use machine learning and other technologies to help people more quickly fill out forms. While being the product manager for our Fill & Sign feature we came up with a lot of innovative ideas on how we can help users make form filling faster and more accurate.

John Xu, Lead Security Engineer, Security Architect/DRM, San Jose

What do you currently work on at Adobe?
I work on the Primetime Digital Rights Management (DRM) team enabling the vision of TV everywhere using Primetime technologies.

What technology have you patented?
I have patented various technologies in software activation and license management. I have also introduced efficient ways to protect video content for integrity and confidentiality.

Of all your professional achievements at Adobe, what are you most proud of and why?
I’m proud to have made significant contributions to two startup projects within Adobe. The first one is Software Activation. The second one is Flash Video Content Protection.

What’s next—any new patents/breakthroughs in the near future?
Ultra HD, High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC or H.265) will bring new challenges to video streaming and protection. Quantum Computer will bring new challenges to cryptography. How to build crypto protocols to resist quantum analysis will require lots of innovation.

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