The case raised some concerns of civil rights and legal process in the United States, and ended in the charges against Sklyarov dropped and Elcomsoft ruled not guilty under the applicable jurisdiction.

On July 16, 2001, as he was about to return to Moscow, Sklyarov was arrested by the FBI and jailed for allegedly violating the United States' Digital Millennium Copyright Act (of 1998) by writing ElcomSoft's Advanced eBook Processor software.

[2] The original issue came to the attention of prosecutors when Adobe Systems, a U.S. company, complained that copy protection arrangements in its e-book file format were being illegally circumvented by ElcomSoft's product.

Adobe withdrew its complaint, but United States Department of Justice prosecutors (under the authority of local U.S. Attorney Robert S. Mueller, future Director of the FBI) declined to likewise drop the charges.

[6] Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe Systems, commented on the case in an interview with CNET: Looking back with 20/20, I wish that we could have had better communication with ElcomSoft, Dmitry Sklyarov and the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) before the whole thing went public.