Global Players from Entertainment, Consumer Electronics,
Telecommunications, and Technology Industries Join
to Advance DRM Interoperability
Sunnyvale, CA, May 17, 2005
- The Coral Consortium (www.coral-interop.org), an
industry-wide technology initiative whose goal
is to deliver an open, voluntary standard for interoperability
between digital rights management (DRM) technologies for consumer devices and
services, today announced that nine companies from entertainment, consumer
electronics, telecommunications, and technology industries have joined, bringing
total membership to nearly 30 corporations.
New members include: EMI Music, Warner Bros. Technical
Operations Inc., Time Warner Cable, Cloakware, Sun
Microsystems, Ardtully Technologies, and Kenwood
Corporation. With the addition of EMI Music, the
Coral Consortium now includes all four major record
labels.
With membership increasing by more than 50% since
February of this year, the group is proceeding rapidly
towards expanding the Coral Consortium 1.0 technology
specification as well as developing a comprehensive
compliance and usage framework for interoperable
DRM systems.
On March 1, 2005, the Coral Consortium published
the 1.0 technology framework, available to all Coral
Members at www.coral-interop.org and available to
non-Coral members under an evaluation agreement.
These specifications are designed to enable service
makers and service providers to start working quickly
on achieving the goal of enabling consumers to be
able to locate and play protected content without
having to grapple with different device DRMs, media
formats, or technical details. By end of summer '05,
the Coral Consortium plans to deliver a comprehensive
usage and compliance framework as well as Coral 2.0
specifications, which will further provide a new
approach to digital content delivery and consumption.
"Coral's growing membership is a testament to the
importance of the interoperability problem and to
the effectiveness of our approach," said Jack Lacy,
president of The Coral Consortium. "While we've accomplished
much in a short time period of time, a lot of work
remains ahead before our next release; new members
are vital to meeting our objectives and for rapid
adoption in the industry. We look forward to new
service providers joining from the digital television
and mobile markets to provide complete representation
of a range of viewpoints from across the entire value
chain."
About The Coral Consortium
Founded on October 4, 2004 as a cross-industry group to promote interoperability
between DRM technologies used in the consumer media market, Coral Consortium's
founding members are HP, Intertrust Technologies Corporation, Koninklijke
Philips Electronics N.V., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. "Panasonic",
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Sony Corporation, and Twentieth Century Fox
Film Corporation.
The Coral Consortium seeks to ensure interoperability
so that today's digital music and video can be easily
accessed and enjoyed, regardless of the service provider
or the device. While recent innovations in digital
media distribution provide consumers with new channels
to acquire music and video, proprietary differences
still exist in underlying DRM or content protection
technology. At times, these technologies conflict
and prevent consumers from playing content packaged
and distributed using one DRM technology on a device
that supports a different DRM technology. The Consortium's
focus is a new technology layer that will allow existing
DRM solutions to co-exist, thereby promoting content
and devices that play well together.
About Intertrust Technologies Corporation
Intertrust develops and licenses intellectual property
for Digital Rights Management (DRM) and trusted computing.
The Company holds over 30 U.S. patents and has approximately
85 patent applications pending worldwide. Intertrust's
patent portfolio covers software and hardware techniques
that can be implemented in a broad range of products
that use DRM and trusted computing technologies, including
computer operating systems, digital media platforms,
web services, and enterprise infrastructure. Intertrust
has research, engineering, and IP groups focusing
on developing and monetizing next-generation technologies
and inventions.
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Media Contacts
For more information, press only:
Robin Buckley, Buckley Kaldenbach for Intertrust,
(703) 533-9805, robin@buckleykaldenbach.com
Isabel Kaldenbach, Buckley Kaldenbach for Intertrust,
(703) 979-3076, isabel@buckleykaldenbach.com |
