Digimarc Corporation (NASDAQ:DMRC) today announced enhanced track and trace and digital watermarking capabilities for digital imagery, providing digital image and brand owners with increased visibility into authorized and unauthorized use of their digital image assets and brands.
The sophisticated ImageBridge tracking system from Digimarc, now enhanced by services from BD-BrandProtect, crawls the broad Internet as well as specific URLs provided by customers to search more than 200 million images each month. When it locates digitally watermarked images, Digimarc delivers reports back to digital image and brand owners allowing them to track their images and more effectively track advertising for their products and/or use of their images in ads, and protect associated trademarks and copyrights.
"As the distribution of digital photography and other media content has gone non-linear, fueled by the popularity of social networking and user generated content sites, the importance and value of monitoring and measuring digital assets has increased exponentially," said Stuart Rosove, senior director of business development, Digimarc.
Rosove continued, "We are pleased to be working with BD-BrandProtect to help our customers and theirs more effectively measure viral distribution of ads, protect trademarks, enforce copyrights and, for those in the business of licensing images, find other ways to monetize their images. The relationship enables a significant increase in search scope and scale and provides Digimarc a foundation upon which to expand our service offerings to other brand and advertising related markets."
In addition to providing Digimarc customers with enhanced image search capabilities, the partnership enables BD-BrandProtect to market Digimarc's digital watermarking technology to its own customer base. These Digimarc capabilities complement BD-BrandProtect's offerings that locate and mitigate potential instances of online threats "” such as phishing, fraud, copyright infringement, web traffic diversion and more "” that can damage company reputations and customer trust. The combined services provide organizations with an expanded view into their presence on the Web.
"Since BD-BrandProtect is laser-focused on helping companies gain control over how they are represented online, we realized an opportunity with Digimarc's technology to expand our capabilities to include digital imagery," said Kevin Joy, VP, BD-BrandProtect. "This partnership provides us with a competitive advantage by combining our online threat protection services with their unique digital watermarking technology. As a result, our customers will be provided with an advanced level of protection for their brands on the Internet."
Digital watermarking provides a unique and persistent identifier for all types of media content, including digital images, television, music and movies. It enables reliable identification of media content across multiple platforms and distribution networks. For digital images, Digimarc ImageBridge digital watermarking weaves a unique and imperceptible identifier into photos as a means of communicating copyright ownership.
About Digimarc
Digimarc Corporation (NASDAQ:DMRC), based in Beaverton, Oregon, is a leading supplier of secure identity and media management solutions. Digimarc provides products and services that enable the annual production of more than 60 million personal identification documents, including two-thirds of U.S. driver licenses and IDs for more than 25 countries. Digimarc's digital watermarking technology provides a persistent digital identity for various media content and is used to enhance the security of financial documents, identity documents and digital images, and support other media rights management applications.
Digimarc has an extensive intellectual property portfolio, with more than 350 issued U.S. patents with more than 7,000 claims, and more than 500 pending U.S. and foreign patent applications in digital watermarking, personal identification and related technologies. The Company is headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, with other U.S. offices in Burlington, Massachusetts; Fort Wayne, Indiana; and the Washington DC area; and international offices in London and Mexico. Please go to www.digimarc.com for more company information.
About BD-BrandProtect
BD-BrandProtect, the leader in online threat protection, empowers organizations to gain control over how they are represented online. The company's services help organizations detect, uncover and take down online threats to their brands, such as phishing, fraud, copyright infringement, web traffic diversion and more. By combining advanced technology and around the clock and human analysis, BD-BrandProtect filters, reports and takes action on the threats that present the most risk to a brand. The company has relationships with more than 2,000 Internet Service Providers globally that account for more than 85 percent of the traffic flowing across the Internet. Founded in 2001, BD-BrandProtect is headquartered in Toronto, Canada, with offices in the United States, Singapore and London. For more information, visit www.bdbrandprotect.com.
Securities Safe Harbor
With the exception of historical information contained in this release, the matters described herein contain certain "forward-looking statements" that are made pursuant to the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements include statements containing the words "believes," "expects," "estimates," "anticipates," "will" or words of similar import or statements of management's opinion. These statements are subject to certain assumptions, risks, uncertainties and changes in circumstances. Actual results may vary materially from those expressed or implied from the statements herein or from historical results, due to changes in economic, business, competitive, technological and/or regulatory factors. More detailed information about risk factors that may affect actual results is set forth in filings by Digimarc with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Forms 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K, including but not limited to those described in the Company's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2006 in Part II, Item 7 thereof ("Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations") under the captions "Liquidity and Capital Resources" and "Factors Affecting Forward Looking Statements" and in Part II, Item 9A thereof ("Controls and Procedures"). Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect management's opinions only as of the date of this release. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to these forward-looking statements.
