Dr. Brotz is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science. At Stanford University, he received a B.S. in Mathematics, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science, doing his research work with Robert W. Floyd.
After several years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona, in 1977 he joined Xerox in Palo Alto, California. Bob Metcalfe loaned him to Xerox PARC, where he worked with Ben Wegbreit, Michael Schroeder and others on the design and implementation of Laurel, the user program component of the Xerox Research electronic mail system. He later joined Xerox PARC outright as a Research Scientist.
Dr. Brotz joined Adobe Systems in March, 1983 as its first employee software designer and implementer. He designed and implemented the graphics and font rendering portions of the PostScript Language interpreter. He held several technical management positions at Adobe, including responsibility for extending the PostScript Language into new domains such as color, displays, and non-Roman writing systems including Japanese and Chinese. He later wrote the prototype Acrobat Distiller.
In 1989 Adobe was sued for patent infringement for scalable type. Having written the software, Dr. Brotz was in the unfortunate position of knowing everything about the accused technology. After working with Adobe’s litigators, it became apparent that he had a knack for explaining software technology to non-technical people. As a result, Dr. Brotz now serves as full-time technical advisor on intellectual property matters, primarily for patent defense.
Dr. Brotz has published articles on a variety of topics related to Computer Science. He authored the Laurel Manual at Xerox PARC and is a co-author of the PostScript Language Reference Manual and of the PostScript Language Cookbook. He is the author of Adobe Type 1 Font Format, which describes typeface programs in detail. Dr. Brotz has given numerous lectures and has participated in several government committees and domestic and international panels related to the topic of intellectual property protection for computer software and digital information.
In 1989, Dr. Brotz shared the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Software System Award for his work on the PostScript Language and Interpreter. In 1994, he was named an ACM Fellow.
