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LIZARDTECH ACQUIRES AT&T LABS' DJVU TECHNOLOGY
FLORHAM PARK, NJ -- In a bid to quickly turn new technologies into
commercial products, AT&T Labs is selling its DjVu technology to
Seattle-based LizardTech to commercialize the scan-to-Web technology
worldwide. AT&T will take a minority equity position in LizardTech and
AT&T Labs developers look forward to working with the company to further
develop DjVu-based products. AT&T will also build differentiated services
for AT&T's business and consumer customers using the licensed DjVu
technology from LizardTech. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
LizardTech is a leading developer of imaging solutions for Internet
applications. Part of the company's strategy is to commercialize products
from public and private laboratories, which it is currently doing with Los
Alamos National Laboratory's MrSID technology.
According to the Association for Information and Image Management, the
document technologies market is anticipated to grow from $13.2 billion in
1998 to $41.6 billion in 2003. DjVu is ideal for scan-to-Web applications
where corporations benefit from digitizing billions of pages of documents,
manuals and other paper-based information for easy sharing over the
Internet or corporate Intra nets.
"Great technology is just the first step," said David Nagel, AT&T chief
technology officer and AT&T Labs president. "LizardTech is the ideal
company to make DjVu more widely available to companies needing to
archive, distribute and share paper-based documents."
"The scan-to-Web market is exploding and DjVu represents the most
advanced technology available today," said John R. Grizz Deal,
LizardTech's president and CEO. "DjVu is ideal for e-tailers, digitization of
corporate documents, online auctions and other Internet-based
information sharing applications, and the product is perfect for companies
wanting to take full advantage of their paper-based assets."
"The scan-to-Web market is completely untapped," said Susan Moyse,
industry analyst at InfoTrends. "There is a growing trend toward
scan-to-Web applications, and with the DjVu acquisition, LizardTech is
poised for leadership in the imaging solutions market." DjVu is the leading
technology for bringing scanned documents to the Web. DjVu allows
companies to scan, store and download documents 20 times faster than
JPEG or GIF and at compression ratios as high as 500:1. AT&T Labs and
LizardTech are committed to making DjVu an open standard for compound
document and scan-to-Web applications. Both the file format and a large
portion of the source code for DjVu will remain available as open source
software. Both companies are confident that by providing code to outside
developers, DjVu will become the de facto standard for document
compression on the Web.
DjVu achieves its stunning results through separating a document into a
bitmap (black and white) portion and a color photo-imagery portion and
encoding them with different techniques to enable smaller storage
requirements and instant downloads. These include a new technique based
on the mathematical theory of "wavelets". To speed download times, DjVu
uses a progressive coding technique that brings up the initial version of
the page very quickly and improves its visual quality as more bits arrive.
For example, the text of a typical magazine page appears in just three
seconds over a 56KBps modem connection. In another second or two, the
first version of the picture and background appear. After a few more
seconds, the final full quality version of the page is completed. DjVu
example images can be found at www.djvu.com and on customer sites.
AT&T Labs, the research and development unit of AT&T, is working to
create the information services and communications network of tomorrow.
AT&T Labs is a leader in the development of technologies and standards
for audio, speech, video and image compression; electronic commerce and
digital copyright management; search and directory services; speech
processing and coding of all sorts; network architecture, design,
engineering and operations; and other areas critical to the advancement
of new communications, Internet and broadband offerings.
Founded in 1992, LizardTech is a privately-held company focused on
developing innovative software that provides users of all levels with
bandwidth optimization and instant access to high-resolution, multipurpose
digital images and multimedia content. The company licensed Generation I
of its MrSID technology from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for
the commercialization of products in the private sector. LizardTech is now
integrating MrSID Generation III into its current product line.
LizardTech's innovative technology has been recognized by its customers
and integration partners, including Adobe, Boeing, Graphic Arts Center
(GAC), the Library of Congress, Lockheed Martin, Sir Speedy and hundreds
of others worldwide. Its technologies are on more than 7 million desktops
and integrated into over 200 applications. In 1998, LizardTech was voted
the Washington Software Alliance's Most Promising Company. Additional
information about the Seattle-based company can be found at
www.lizardtech.com.
www.lizardtech.com
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