ImageSpan Services Offer Image Suppliers Quick Path to Implementation of New Licensing Standards Adopted by Leading Publishers

Representatives of McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Pearson all announced at a recent event inNew York that they will adopt licensing standards created by the Picture Licensing Universal System (PLUS) Coalition, an international non-profit organization dedicated to simplifying and facilitating the communication and management of image rights.

The publishers said that they will adopt the PLUS Picture Licensing Glossary in their contracts and that they encourage image suppliers to begin embedding PLUS license metadata in all images within one year. The PLUS standards allow rights and attribution information to travel within image files in a machine-readable format that provides instant access and universal understanding. ImageSpan's licensing technology and Web-based services already comply with standards created by PLUS that simplify the process of granting, obtaining and managing the permissions necessary to use digital images.

"We are very excited that these major publishers have all agreed to support the PLUS standards," said Iain Scholnick, chief executive officer, ImageSpan. "We view this as a huge validation of our support and participation in the PLUS Coalition, and our market-leading integration of the PLUS standards in ImageSpan products. For three years, we have worked with the PLUS Coalition to ensure that our licensing technology complies with PLUS standards, and simplifies and streamlines licensing processes. A growing number of major customers are adopting the PLUS standards, and we stand ready to meet the needs of these customers and their image suppliers. Our experience and expertise with the PLUS standards uniquely positions us as the product-of-choice for image licensing."

ImaqeSpan allows image licensors and licensees to benefit from the PLUS licensing standards through its LicenseStream Creator PRO service for individual content creators and small agencies, and through its API for media companies, advertising agencies and content production businesses.

Said Jeff Sedlik, president and co-founder of the PLUS Coalition, "In addition to supporting and participating in the PLUS initiative, ImageSpan has integrated the PLUS standards in LicenseStream, allowing image suppliers to provide their customers with embedded PLUS license information, streamlining previously manual licensing processes, dramatically lowering costs and accelerating time-to-market for digital content."

In support of the PLUS Coalition, ImageSpan developed two PLUS tools currently in beta distribution on the PLUS Web site, The PLUS License Generator is a browser-based application that allows for the selection of usage criteria, metadata capture and the generation of an XMP file that contains the PLUS media summary code, metadata and license details. The PLUS License Embedder & Reader allows an XMP file generated by the PLUS License Generator to be embedded into a digital file.

In addition to providing technology services to PLUS, ImageSpan separately offers the LicenseStream API Tool kit, which complies with PLUS standards and is fully capable of generating and decoding PLUS Media Summary Codes. The LicenseStream API Tool kit provides media companies and other image providers with a fully working embedded content licensing, royalty settlement and tracking service.

For more information about ImageSpan, go to http://www.imagespan.com

About ImageSpan

ImageSpan provides an enabling infrastructure for content licensing, helping content owners define rights and transact online in minutes. We automate today's manual licensing processes. ImageSpan is the market-leading licensing automation platform partner for global advertising, content production and content delivery businesses. Enterprise partners using the ImageSpan platform include Omnicom, Visible World and online advertising agencies. We offer a number of delivery options including deployment through Adobe software. Founded in 2003 and based inSausalito, California, ImageSpan is a trusted solution provider and is the exclusive provider of license registry services to the PLUS Coalition, the multi-nation and multi-industry standard for image licensing. For more information, please go to http://www.imagespan.com or call (888) 921-1221

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