Software escrow strategy for automating intellectual property protection

iForem unveiled its strategy for developing and delivering on-demand, purely-digital Automated Intellectual Property Protection products. iForem’s current and planned offerings, based on the company’s Automated Retention Management (ARM) platform, allow businesses to easily and affordably safeguard intellectual property and associated digital content by dramatically reducing the cost and complexity of traditional escrow offerings.

iForem is first focusing on Software Escrow, targeting (1) Independent Service Vendors (ISVs), who need the competitive advantage of having an affordable, streamlined Web-based solution that ensures the integrity of their intellectual property, and (2) large software publishers who often rely on ISV on a contractual basis.

The key to iForem’s approach is developing MicroApps – targeted applications based on the company’s Automated Retention Management (ARM) business process automation platform.

Software escrow agreements enable customers to gain access to application code (and the intellectual property that supports it) if certain conditions arise – for example, if the ISV’s operations are disrupted, it goes out of business or is acquired by another vendor that is unwilling to support the application.

In traditional software escrow, a custom contract is created where an escrow agent keeps possession of source code and releases it to a beneficiary under very specific circumstances. Only iForem provides a universal client-independent contract backed by secure digital code storage and release based on iForem Virtual Vault technology. Moreover, many software vendors, as well as customers, are discovering that traditional escrow agreements are not well-suited for today’s on-demand world due to their expense, lack of scalability, reliance on physical storage, and the long lead times involved in resolution.