Xerox Licenses 'Cool' New Technology to Microsoft For Viewing, Organizing Web Pages; WebForager Enables a Web Page to Turn Over a New Leaf

Business Wire, May 18, 1999

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 18, 1999--

Xerox Corporation (NYSE:XRX) has licensed to Microsoft Corp. WebForager, a new technology that enables World Wide Web surfers to leaf through the virtual pages of the net every bit as easily as a reader flips through the physical pages of a book, Xerox announced today.

WebForager allows users to create WebBooks, complete with pages that can be turned and handled in 3D, as if they were part of a physical book. The Web pages and WebBooks are displayed in a three-dimensional workspace, and can be easily manipulated, stored and retrieved.

"As a new technology, WebForager could significantly influence the future of graphical user interfaces," said Dan Ling, director of Microsoft Research. "We plan to use the technology in combination with Microsoft's current 3D user interface research."

Added Xerox Chief Scientist John Seely Brown: "WebForager represents yet another example of the radical research emerging from the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). The Web is built on a document metaphor and WebForager honors the manner in which humans are most comfortable dealing with documents and sharing what they know - pages and books - with underlying technology that is so complex it offers the elegance of intuitive simplicity."

Terms of the nonexclusive agreement with Microsoft were not disclosed. Ling said that Microsoft has been working on its own 3D user interfaces, including the Data Mountain, which helps users remember where documents were placed in a 3D environment. By licensing this Xerox technology, Microsoft is enabling the two companies to work together on research that will lead to the next generation of 3D user interfaces.

WebForager was developed by researchers at PARC, where more than 20 years ago the original icon-based graphical user interface was nurtured, ushering in a new era of computing. Xerox is developing a significant patent position with respect to WebForager and will aggressively seek to license these patents to companies interested in building and selling their own interfaces. PARC has also developed information visualization technology, now being marketed as VizControls(R), through Inxight Software, a wholly owned subsidiary and part of Xerox Technology Enterprises.

The relationship with Microsoft is the latest manifestation of Xerox' renewed efforts to leverage its $1.7 billion annual investment in research and technology to deliver new products, spawn a series of entrepreneurial spin-off companies, and license its rich portfolio of patents and inventions to other companies.

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