The Board of the Marlin Developer Community announced the use of Marlin Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology by a TV project trial lead by a Japanese government agency and an associated nationwide TV portal service.

Five major consumer electronics companies -- Hitachi, Panasonic, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba -- announced at the CEATEC Japan 2006 consumer electronics show, a proof of concept trial for TV portal services using Marlin IPTV-ES as the content protection system for video distribution. This trial is conducted by the Japanese Ministry of Economy and Trade Industry (METI) to investigate platform businesses with networked consumer electronics.

Prior to this announcement, a newly formed TV Portal Service Corporation, established to provide a nationwide portal service for video streaming and download, announced that it would use the Marlin IPTV-ES specification as the DRM system.

"It's great to see that within five months of the formation of the Marlin Developer Community, adopters are moving quickly to build Marlin into their products and services," said Scott Smyers, co-chairman of the Marlin Developer Community. "IPTV is an exciting growth area and we are pleased that Marlin technology is part of such a project."

In January 2005, the five Marlin founders -- Intertrust Technologies, Matsushita Electric (Panasonic), Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics, and Sony Corporation -- formed a joint development association to develop Marlin technology. The group's goal was to develop the specifications to a point of maturity, and to create an open developer community to drive their adoption in the market.

Marlin technology provides content protection, distribution and sharing capabilities for devices and services. Marlin-based devices and services allow flexible sharing of content both in a consumer's home networking environment, and in situations where a consumer wishes to share content across networks. The heart of Marlin is a software engine that manages the relationships among consumers, their devices and their content. Marlin enables multiple service providers of IPTV, Broadband, traditional Broadcast, and Mobile to deliver services to a given home network in a manner that is responsive to typical business models and sensitive to consumer behaviors. Marlin IPTV-ES is the first of several specifications that provide Marlin functionality for IPTV systems. Information on joining Marlin may be found at: http://www.marlin-community.com/join.

In response to the overwhelming interest in the Marlin introductory seminars offered this summer, the Marlin Developer Community will hold additional seminars in Asia, Europe and the United States later this year. The seminars will present the Marlin architecture and value proposition to all parties seeking to learn more about Marlin technology. Times and locations of the developer seminars are being finalized and will be available at http://www.marlin-community.com/developers/events.