After taking full control of its Teletrax video fingerprinting JV and folding it in to its own Content Identification unit, Philips is now spinning out the merged entity as a new and renamed operation – Civolution. Headquartered in Holland with an office in Hollywood, the new unit has immediately got VC funding from Prime Technology Venture for the spin-out, with Philips also becoming a partner in the VC house itself.
London-based Teletrax, which was launched in 2002 as a JV between Philips and Medialink, used unique algorithims to embed imperceptible signals in video content transmitted by the likes of Reuters and NBC, then monitoring dozens of broadcast sources for illegal uses of encoded material – helping content owners track re-use of their footage. Philips this summer bought the 76 percent it didn’t own. Alex Terpstra, who was chief of Philips’ Content ID unit, is now Civolution CEO.
Disclaimer: Teletrax has been a sponsor of paidContent:UK and helped us organise a video measurement roundtable in London earlier this year.