Time Warner, Microsoft Make DRM Move

Time Warner is now making its initial investment in the Bethesda, Maryland company, while Microsoft has increased its investment. Time Warner, Microsoft and ContentGuard purchased substantially all of the ownership held by Xerox Corporation, the source of ContentGuard's original technology. Xerox will retain a small equity interest in the company.

Content Guard develops DRM technology that it patents for licensed use. Among its portfolio of 16 patents is XrML (eXtensible rights Markup Language), which is now the basis of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) approved MPEG REL, the standard rights expression language for assigning usage rights and conditions to any digital object.

"This (investment) is a significant milestone, not only for ContentGuard but for the digital content distribution market in general," said Michael Miron, CEO of ContentGuard in a statement. "Together with Microsoft's, Time Warner's input into our company's direction will accelerate the pace of development for the new standards and technologies that we champion."

"Today's announcement marks an important step in our work on DRM, as well as in our collaboration with Microsoft on this key initiative," added Ron Grant, senior vice president at Time Warner.

For more on Microsoft/Time Warner collaboration, see CRN.

This story courtesy of TechWeb.