SAN FRANCISCO--Sept. 25, 2001--Today at Seybold 2001, ContentGuard, Inc., the leading provider of Digital Rights Management (DRM) Rights Language technology and OverDrive, a world leader in software, eCommerce, DRM and content conversion services to the book industry, announced a strategic alliance designed to augment the Rights Management solutions already offered by OverDrive through the use of XrML (eXtensible rights Markup Language) -- the only Rights Expression Language currently in commercial use. Under the terms of the agreement, OverDrive and ContentGuard will work together to deploy XrML into the authoring and conversion workflows already supported by the successful tools and services currently marketed by OverDrive. In addition, the two companies intend to partner on marketing their Digital Rights Management capabilities in the ePublishing arena. "As the ePublishing market matures, it is important for members of the value chain to have consistent tools and methods to express rights information associated with digital content at all stages of the process. Content owners will now have the ability to tag content with rights metadata up front for the benefit of all channel partners. This helps insure that rights information is communicated when deploying various DRM systems such as Microsoft Digital Asset Server through OverDrive's MIDAS suite of service'' says Steve Potash, OverDrive's CEO. "XrML is emerging as the de facto standard, and we are delighted to work with ContentGuard to accelerate the adoption of interoperable DRM systems.'' "ContentGuard is now singularly focused on licensing our core technologies such as XrML, and OverDrive is the perfect complement to that strategy,'' said Michael Miron, ContentGuard Co-Chairman and CEO. "OverDrive has been a worldwide leader at the forefront of many trends as in the ePublishing and eBook markets. Having a visionary company recognize the benefits from deploying XrML is further validation of the need for a standard Rights Expression Language to foster the growth of the digital content market. Now publishers can work with OverDrive to gain the interoperability and flexibility they desire in their solutions.'' In addition, OverDrive will offer ContentGuard's RightsEdge and eContentSeller customers, both in the U.S. and in Europe, options that will enable them to take advantage of OverDrive's comprehensive eBook and eCommerce workflow services.