U.S. Sues Adobe Over Hard-to-Cancel Subscriptions

U.S. regulators sued Adobe on Monday over claims that the company made it difficult to cancel subscriptions to Photoshop and other software, an escalation by regulators in a crackdown against such practices.

The Justice Department said in its lawsuit that Adobe hid details of an expensive cancellation fee from consumers “in fine print and behind optional text boxes and hyperlinks.” Adobe’s website and customer service representatives made canceling additionally challenging, according to allegations in the suit.

“Adobe knows about the barriers consumers face when attempting to cancel their subscriptions,” the government said in the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The challenge follows a similar suit by the Federal Trade Commission against Amazon last year, in which the government argued that the e-commerce giant made it hard for customers to terminate their Prime memberships. The agency has proposed new “click to cancel” rules, which would require companies to offer an easy way to stop paying for a product.

The new efforts to penalize companies with hard-to-cancel subscriptions build on a wider attempt by federal regulators to rein in Big Tech’s power. The Justice Department and the F.T.C. have filed antitrust lawsuits against Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Meta, the owner of Instagram and WhatsApp, charging that their behavior or deals stifle competition. Adobe dropped a planned $20 billion purchase of Figma, a design startup, when it faced resistance from regulators around the world last year.

In the suit against Adobe, the Justice Department named David Wadhwani, the president of its digital media business, and Maninder Sawhney, a company vice president, as defendants. The suit follows an investigation into Adobe’s practices by the F.T.C.