Corel was founded by Michael Cowpland in 1985 as a research laboratory.

The company had great

success early in the high-tech boom of the 1990s and early 2000s with the product CorelDRAW, and
became, for a time, the biggest software company in Canada. In 1996 it
acquired Novell WordPerfect and started competing with the thought of being "Pepsi to
Microsoft's Coke"[5] as Microsoft Word was the top-used word processing software at the time. Corel
was in a difficult position as Microsoft pushed pre-loaded copies of its software onto new computers.
This mainly consisted of Microsoft Works office applications, but a variant called Works Suite also
bundled the Microsoft Word software.
The company held the naming rights to the home arena for the NHL's Ottawa Senators from
February 1996 until January 2006 as the "Corel Centre", a venue currently known as the Canadian
Tire Centre.[6]
In 1997 Corel sold its Corel ChemLab studio and its "CD Home Collection" consisting of over 60
multimedia titles to Hoffmann + Associates, a Toronto-based company. As part of the deal, Corel
acquired a minority interest in Hoffmann + Associates and received royalties.[7]
In August 2000 Cowpland was accused of insider trading and left. A new board of directors was then
appointed and Derek Burney Jr., announced that the product line would be split into several
brands—DeepWhite, ProCreate, and Corel. However, these plans would be scrapped, and only the
Corel brand would remain. Corel acquired the graphics software company Micrografx in late 2001.
In August 2003, Corel was bought out by the private equity firm Vector Capital for $1.05 a share
(slightly more than the cash in the company). The company was voluntarily delisted from
the NASDAQ and Toronto Stock Exchanges. Some U.S. shareholders alleged the management
benefited from the buyout personally while the buyout price was too low. A lawsuit was filed in the
U.S. to stop the buyout and was unsuccessful.
In March 2005 Corel announced that the United States Justice Department purchased 50,000
licenses of WordPerfect (adding to the worldwide user base of 20 million) and that WordPerfect was
adding 4 million new users per year thanks to bundling deals with Dell.[8] Corel contended that
WordPerfect was the only viable alternative to Microsoft Office, with sales 70 times more
than Lotus' SmartSuite. On April 26, 2006, Corel completed its return to the public market with
an initial public offering on NASDAQ,[9] the same day finalizing the acquisition of WinZip, a well-
known archiving software title.
On December 12, 2006, Corel completed its acquisitions of InterVideo and Ulead. The InterVideo
acquisition was valued at around $196 million.[10] In May 2008, CEO David Dobson announced that
he was leaving the company to take a senior strategy role at Pitney Bowes.[11] Dobson was replaced
on May 8 by former Symantec executive Kris Hagerman.[12] In November 2009, it was announced
that Vector Capital would be purchasing the remaining shares of common stock in Corel
Corporation.[13] Upon completion, this made Corel once again privately owned.[14] On January 29,
2010, the shareholders of Corel approved its previously announced stock consolidation, completing
the transfer to Corel Holdings, L.P., a limited partnership controlled by an affiliate of Vector Capital.[15]
In January 2012, Corel acquired Roxio from Rovi Corporation for an undisclosed
amount.[16] Subsequently on July 2, 2012, Corel announced its acquisition of Pinnacle Systems, a
developer of consumer-oriented video editing products (such as the Pinnacle Studio series) owned
by Avid.[17]
Having suffered layoffs in 2003 and 2008,[18] Corel began a near yearly culture of restructuring
beginning in 2010, when in the latter part of that year the company's finance department was
restructured and moved to their Taipei office, resulting in significant layoffs at its Ottawa HQ.
Restructuring in 2012[19] resulted in more layoffs. In December 2013, the company's restructuring
resulted in the layoffs of the Taipei locations engineering and quality assurance team. Corel's Taipei
office was the core development centre of PaintShop Pro and VideoStudio, one of the company's
most well-known photo- and video-editing bundles. The 2013 restructuring led to a partial handover
of product development to outsourced companies, resulting in more rapid, low-cost development
across its product lines. The company continued with layoffs in 2014 and once again at the
beginning of 2015 with the change of the company's CEO to Patrick Nichols, previously the head of
Corel's WinZip business unit.
In August 2016, Corel announced the acquisition of the Mindjet MindManager business from
Spigit.[20]
In June 2018, Corel announced the acquisition of Gravit GmbH.[21]
In December 2018, Corel announced the acquisition of Parallels.[22]