Intertrust

Market position

Intertrust is an established trusted-computing and DRM technology provider whose inventions the company says enable billions of licensed products worldwide. Its continued emphasis on intellectual property led to it being characterized as a "patent troll," though The New York Times argued it did not quite fit that profile. Companies cited as similar include BeyondTrust, Entrust, TrustArc and iTrust.

Intertrust positions its technology around persistent, policy-based protection of data itself rather than of network connections, vendor-agnostic device authentication that avoids platform lock-in, and support for open standards and independent DRM ecosystems such as Marlin, which it founded with Sony, Panasonic, Philips and Samsung. It also holds a foundational patent portfolio in trusted distributed computing that has underpinned large licensing settlements.

Technology

The company's technology stack covers trusted distributed computing, digital rights management (including Marlin DRM), public key infrastructure for device identity and provisioning in IoT, software self-defense and application protection (whiteCryption), and a DataOps platform that encrypts and signs device data in transit and at rest, enforces granular data governance policies, unifies disparate platforms into a virtual layer of multi-party data, and produces immutable audit records.

Go-to-market

Intertrust sells to enterprises and operators through direct commercial and business development functions led by a chief commercial officer, and works through partner and standards ecosystems, including the Marlin DRM ecosystem, the Coral Consortium and a partner program for business and technology partners. Historically it also monetized its portfolio through patent licensing to large technology and media corporations.

Enterprises and operators in media and entertainment, energy and utilities, and IoT device ecosystems, including telcos and energy, health, insurance and product/service providers seeking home IoT services, as well as consumer electronics manufacturers and content distributors.

Geography

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, with an office at 920 Stewart Dr #100, Sunnyvale, California, and additional offices in Tokyo, Seoul, London, Paris, Mumbai, Beijing, Tallinn, Riga and Bangalore. Leadership includes managing directors for India, Japan and Greater China.

History

The company began in January 1990 as Electronic Publishing Resources, founded by Victor Shear, whose earlier patent work covered metering and protecting data on compact discs. David M. Van Wie became involved in early 1991, and the business was renamed Intertrust Technologies in 1996. In 1995 it announced Novell would use its technology, and David P. Maher, a former Bell Labs Fellow, became CTO in 1999. Intertrust went public on NASDAQ (ITRU) in October 1999 and raised a further $92 million in an April 2000 secondary offering. It acquired PublishOne and ZeroGravity Technologies in 2001 and received a $20 million Nokia investment, but losses exceeding $115 million a year prompted workforce reductions and office closures in late 2001 and 2002, after which the company shifted from software marketing and development to intellectual property licensing. In early 2003 it became a joint venture of Philips, Sony and Stephens Inc., with Talal Shamoon appointed CEO. Microsoft settled patent litigation in April 2004, agreeing to pay $440 million to license Intertrust patents, and Apple settled a 2013 patent suit in April 2014 on undisclosed terms. Intertrust co-founded the Coral Consortium in 2006, formed the Latvia-based whiteCryption joint venture in 2010, announced the Seacert PKI service in 2011, launched the PatentShield program with Google in 2017, and introduced the Intertrust Platform in June 2020.

Risks & controversies

Intertrust incurred losses exceeding $115 million a year by the end of 2001, with shares at times trading below $1, leading to repeated workforce reductions and office closures in 2001 and 2002 and the cessation of software marketing and development in favor of IP licensing. Its litigation-driven licensing strategy, including suits against Microsoft and Apple, drew the "patent troll" label from some observers. Its Marlin technology was described as having achieved mixed success.