SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 29, 2004--E-Book Systems, creator of the patented Digital Flip® technology, has entered into a joint venture with Japan's SOFTBANK Media & Marketing Corp. (SBMM), a subsidiary of SOFTBANK Corp. SBMM will also invest $3 million in E-Book Systems Private Limited (Singapore), which holds a number of patents for Digital Flip® and e-publishing technologies.

The new joint venture company, E-Book Systems Kabushiki Kaisha (KK), will direct the establishment of electronic publishing in Japan and Korea. The company aims to be the number one e-book platform provider and distributor in these territories, through the sub-licensing of Digital Flip® technology, software distribution and online sales and distribution of e-book titles. E-Book Systems KK anticipates turning a profit by 2006.

E-Book Systems KK will form a special e-publishing interest group based on E-Book's Digital Flip® platform by inviting value-added partners in the publishing, media and printing industries. E-Book Systems KK will leverage on this special interest group to gather more market feedbacks so as to better deploy its products and services.

"After working extensively with E-Book Systems, we realized their strategic value to our e-publishing business," says Makoto Okazaki, president and CEO of SOFTBANK Media & Marketing Corp. "Therefore, we have decided to invest in the parent company where the patents reside and arrive at starting a joint venture company for the Japanese and Korean markets."

According to the eBook Marketing Report 2004, the Japanese e-publishing market is growing at a rate of 1,200 new titles per month and is projected to reach $711 million by 2010. E-Book System's Digital Flip® technology is unique in the way it manages, protects and delivers e-content to the end users. It is well poised to take advantage of the ever-increasing broadband networks and lower cost of e-production and e-delivery.

"For e-publishing to be mainstream and profitable, complicated technological, security and user interface issues have to be addressed," says Richard Wan, CEO of E-Book Systems. "Our patented Digital Flip® technology supports content encryption, Digital Rights Management (DRM) and data streaming, topped off by an intuitive page-flipping user interface."

With 273 magazine titles worldwide using E-Book Systems' Digital Flip® technology, the company is also looking to expand to Europe and Asia Pacific. E-Book Systems currently has offices in California, Singapore and Beijing. Customers include Reed Business Information, the largest business-to-business publisher in the US, Primedia Inc., the leading targeted media company and Cygnus Business Media, the leading diversified business-to-business media company.

About E-Book Systems Pte Ltd

E-Book Systems Pte Ltd (http://www.ebooksys.com/) was founded in 1998 with a mission to bring the natural look and feel of the paper-based book into the domain of consumer products, computers and the Internet. E-Book Systems' products make use of its patented Digital Flip® technology to deliver multimedia content such as digital photographs, animations, text, audio and music via a 3-D Page-Flipping interface, which appears as a virtual book. These contents could be streamed or delivered both online and offline through E-Book Systems' OpenFlip(TM) format. E-Book Systems also offers Digital Rights Management, FlipBook tracking ASP services and Flip Enterprise solutions for publishers and corporations. E-Book Systems, a private ongoing corporation, has offices in Santa Clara, Calif., Beijing, China and Singapore. E-Book Systems' products are distributed worldwide, including the U.S., Europe, Japan and Asia Pacific Region. For more information, contact E-Book Systems by phone at (408) 625-8000 or e-mail at info@ebooksys.com.

About SOFTBANK Media and Marketing Corporation

As an integral part of SOFTBANK Corp.'s comprehensive Internet initiatives, which also include e-Commerce and online financial services, SOFTBANK Media & Marketing Corp. (SBMM) is developing an array of online media and marketing services, including Cyber Communications, Softbank Publishing, ITmedia Japan, Learning Point Corp (formerly Click2Learn Japan), and MP Technologies.

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