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SpatialNews Press Release - Wireless News > Business News > Feature Columns >
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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