FileOpen Systems Unveils DOI Functionality in First-Ever Application of Copyright Protection System

NEW YORK, NY -- December 10, 1997
ileOpen Systems Inc., a developer of secure publishing software, today demonstrated the first commercial copyright protection product to employ the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system at the DOI Technology Forum held at Sun Microsystems' New York offices.

Presenting to members of the DOI Foundation, the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, the Association of American Publishers, and other software vendors, FileOpen Systems showed live DOI functionality in the company's FileOpen PDF security system.

About the DOI
The DOI system is a new method, developed by leading publishers and members of the Internet infrastructure-building community, which assigns unique and persistent identifiers to digital objects (documents, images, sound files, etc.). These identifiers are registered with a central server, called the Handle Server, which is designed to succeed the current system of referring to Internet documents by their URLs, or physical location on a server. When a digital file has a DOI associated with it, the Handle Server can route a request for the file to the file's current copyright owner, regardless of its physical location.

FileOpen PDF and the DOI
FileOpen PDF is an access control solution for digital publishers, allowing them to set copy protection, usage restrictions, and expiration periods on documents in the Portable Document Format (PDF). FileOpen PDF also allows the embedding of DOIs, so that publishers can maintain and track usage of the files through the Handle System. FileOpen Systems has demonstrated how FileOpen PDF can be used with DOIs to route file requests through the Handle Server and then through a commercial transaction module at the copyright owner's site.

"FileOpen Systems has been at the forefront of integrating the DOI system, and is the first software company to implement the technology in a commercially available product for the mainstream publishing market. Using FileOpen PDF in conjunction with DOIs and the Handle System, a publisher today can set up a secure Internet publishing enterprise which will uphold their copyright ownership for decades to come" said Christopher Burns, consultant to the publishing industry and author of the Association of American Publishers' report on copyright which led to the development of the DOI specification.

Future Plans
"We want to show the publishing community that it is possible to establish a commercial publishing enterprise on the Web, using the latest in copyright protection technology, without making a big investment," said Sanford Bingham, president of FileOpen Systems.

The company will continue to expand DOI functionality in its software products as it applies its proprietary Secure Publishing Architecture (SPA) to other digital file formats. "We are committed to staying on the cutting edge of DOI and Handle System implementation, as well as bringing this technology into the hands of small publishers and individual users," Bingham continued. \