SAN JOSE, Calif.--October 1, 2002--Digital rights management (DRM) systems and supporting technologies that protect valuable content from super distribution, are experiencing strong market growth with the increasing digitization of content for easy transfer or sale via the Internet.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (IT.frost.com), The U.S. Digital Content Protection Market, reveals that this industry generated revenues totaling $285.6 million in 2001. Total market revenues are expected to reach $864 million in 2007.

"2002 marks the beginning of the end for peer-to-peer network users that super distribute intellectual property with impunity," says Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Jarad Carleton. "With the push to digitize all types of content, the need to protect that content will become increasingly important in order to prevent intellectual property theft and protect revenues of content owners."

The acceptance of extensible rights markup language (XrML) as a global digital rights language is an important step towards unifying a balkanized industry, in addition to helping DRM solution interoperability, and accelerating market revenue growth.

Healthcare and financial services already use sensitive and personalized digital content and have a legally mandated need to protect it. With the rapid evolution in web technology and dynamic generation of content, market verticals such as government, media and the entertainment industries are also ready to standardize the implementation of the technology.

While DRM vendors are primarily focusing on the above industries, corporate enterprise is fast becoming a lucrative market with a growing need to protect trade secrets. New solutions and supporting technologies that provide additional security layers to existing DRM systems are generating trust among users.

Another factor aiding the expansion of the DRM solutions market is the increasing willingness of vendors to try corporate-friendly pricing models. Business models for content protection solutions that eliminate transaction charges are expected to encourage industries such as publishing that have slim margins to increase digital publication.

The following is a list of key industry participants: Adobe Systems, Inc.; Alchemedia Technologies, Inc.; Authentica, Inc.; Blue Spike, Inc.; Clicking Capital Corp.; Cloakware Corp.; ContentGuard, Inc.; Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.; DataPlay, Inc.; Digimarc Corp.; DigitalOwl, Inc.; Digital World Services; Entrust, Inc.; FileOpen Systems, Inc.; IBM Corp.; Infraworks Corp.; Intel Corp.; Internet Digital Rights Management; InterTrust Technologies Corp.; Macrovision Corp.; Markany Corp.; Microsoft Corp.; Midbar Tech Ltd.; Netquartz; OASIS; Philips Semiconductors; Phocis Ltd.; RealNetworks, Inc.; SealedMedia; Signum Technologies Ltd.; Smarte Solutions, Inc.; Sony DADC Austria AG.

Frost & Sullivan is a global leader in strategic growth consulting. This ongoing growth opportunity analysis is part of the Information Technology Services Coverage, which also includes market insights on U.S. Web Hosting Markets and U.S. Web Content Management Markets. Frost & Sullivan also offers custom growth consulting to a variety of national and international companies. Executive summaries and interviews are available to the press.

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