Inso Picks Up Bitstream's Dumped Archetype

Computergram International, August 31, 1998

Bitstream Inc, which used to protest that it was about more than just fonts, has sold non-core assets in order to get back to its core business of, you guessed it, licensing fonts. The company is selling part of the applications division it acquired as pre- press software manufacturer Archetype in April last year (CI No 3,141).

Inso Providence Corp of Boston, Massachusetts, has agreed to take workgroup productivity and workflow software MediaBank and InterSEP, an open pre-press interface, off Bitstream's hands for $12m in cash. Inso plans to slot the technology into its Enterprise Publishing Platform, which manages content for print, CD, DVD and the net. The transaction includes certain technologies now under R&D, which are expected to be written-off against Inso's third quarter 1998 earnings for between $8m and $9m. The companies say the MediaBank and InterSEP businesses turned over $4m in 1997. About 30 Bitstream employees are expected to join Inso in Boston. Under a related agreement, Bitstream gets $600,000 to license its forthcoming PageFlex client/server application to Inso.