Amsterdam, January 9, 2006 - Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced it has acquired the FileLine Digital Rights Management (DRM) division of Navisware, an established technology company bridging computer aided design (CAD) and enterprise intelligence. The acquisition will provide new capabilities for Adobe® LiveCycle™ Policy Server to persistently protect business critical documents in PDF, Microsoft® Office and CAD formats, independent of how they are stored or delivered inside and outside the firewall. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
“In today’s competitive global environment, financial services, government, and manufacturing organizations must be able to securely extend their business processes outside the firewall to collaborate with partners and suppliers,” said Chris Christiansen, vice president Security Products and Services, IDC. “Organizations must manage legal and regulatory risks, and safeguard against intellectual property theft by applying persistent protection and control over sensitive information, in any format in which it resides.”
“We deal with thousands of different documents during every construction project," said Joseph Diianni, director of technology at the U.S. Green Building Council, the nation's foremost coalition of organizations providing certification for constructing environmentally responsible, profitable buildings. "By securing a wider range of materials, Adobe is making it easier to adopt more integrated, automated processes for sharing and collaborating on building information."
Privately held and based in Raleigh, North Carolina, Navisware developed FileLine to provide DRM capabilities for a wide variety of document types critical to the engineering design process, such as CAD and Microsoft Word documents. These capabilities will be integrated into LiveCycle Policy Server, enabling organizations to apply policies directly to a broad range of documents such as financial, government, or engineering documents containing intellectual property for controlling how, when, and by whom the documents can be used. Additionally, managers and auditors can easily view an audit log of who accessed the document, and indications of improper usage or disclosure. This same DRM technology will help ensure that version control of documents is maintained when the document owner invokes immediate revocation or date-based expiration, helping to prevent costly mistakes based on outdated documents or intellectual property falling into unintended hands.
“The powerful new DRM capabilities that Navisware brings to Adobe’s document security solutions will help enable our customers to conduct business more securely, while meeting increasingly stringent regulations for protecting sensitive information,” said David Mendels, senior vice president, Enterprise and Developer Business Unit at Adobe. “When combined with the growing ecosystem of Adobe LiveCycle Policy Server partners such as Canon, eGain, Entrust, and Fuji XEROX, we can offer our customers end-to-end security for protecting the entire information lifecycle from creation, through distribution and collaboration, to archival and destruction.”
Adobe LiveCycle Policy Server for applying policies to PDF documents is currently available. For more information, visit
www.adobe.com/security. The new DRM capabilities for Microsoft Office and CAD documents are expected to be integrated into LiveCycle Policy Server and available in Fall, 2006.
Forward Looking Statements Disclosure This press release contains forward looking statements, including those related to revenue, strategies, goals, outlook and product releases, which involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Factors that might cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to: general economic or political conditions in any of the major countries in which we do business, delays in development or shipment of our new products or major new versions of existing products, introduction of new products by existing and new competitors, difficulties in transitions to new business models or markets, changes in demand for application software, computers and printers, intellectual property disputes and litigation, changes to our distribution channel, the impact of malicious code, such as worms and viruses, on our computer network and applications, interruptions or terminations in our relationships with our turnkey assemblers, fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates, changes in accounting rules, unanticipated changes in tax rates, market risks associated with our equity investments, and our inability to attract and retain key personnel. For further discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties, individuals should refer to the Company’s SEC filings, including the 2004 annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed in 2005. The Company does not undertake an obligation to update forward looking statements.
NOTES TO EDITORS
About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information – anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit
www.adobe.com.
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© 2006 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adobe, the Adobe logo, and Adobe LiveCycle are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. Microsoft is either a registered trademark or a trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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