Digital watermarking companies set to merge
eetimes.com
By Junko Yoshida
EE Times
(06/16/99, 3:09 p.m. EDT)
LOS ANGELES — Two leading digital watermarking companies, Aris
Technologies Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.) and Solana Technology Development
Corp. (San Diego), will announce plans to merge this afternoon. "We have
signed an intent to merge," said Greg Hampton, director of business
development at Solana Technology.
The announcement comes at a critical moment, as the so-called 4Cs (IBM,
Intel, Matsushita Electric and Toshiba) are reportedly close to selecting a
digital watermarking technology that they'll use in systems to protect
DVD-Audio content. Solana's Hampton said that the 4Cs had stated at a
meeting of the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) in Los Angles on
Monday (June 14) that two systems met their watermarking requirements:
those of Aris Technologies and Solana Technology.
Members of the 4Cs did not return phone calls by press time.
In the past several weeks, the 4Cs have been conducting a second round of
testing on digital watermarking technologies proposed by Aris, Blue Spike,
Cognicity Inc. (Edina, Minn.), and Solana, in addition to the one submitted by
IBM Corp.
Although the 4Cs' activity is solely focused on DVD-Audio, many industry
sources believe that their watermarking decision will set the tone for SDMI's
decision for its copy-protection mechanism. |
