Tumbleweed Communications

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Tumbleweed Communications Corp.
Image: tmwd_logo_05.gif
Type Publicly traded
Founded
Headquarters Redwood City, California
Industry security solutions for internet commerce
Revenue US $60M (2006)
Website www.tumbleweed.com/index.html

Tumbleweed Communications Corp. provides messaging security solutions for enterprise and government customers of all sizes [1]. Organizations use their products to block security threats, protect information, and conduct business online. Tumbleweed provides solutions for inbound and outbound email protection, secure file routing, and identity validation that allow organizations to conduct business over the Internet. Tumbleweed offers these solutions in three product suites: MailGate, SecureTransport™, and Validation Authority™. MailGate provides protection against spam, viruses, and attacks, and enables policy-based message filtering, encryption, and routing. SecureTransport enables customers to safely exchange large files and transactions without proprietary software. Validation Authority determines the validity of digital certificates.

Tumbleweed has approximately 2,300 enterprise and government customers. Their traditional market focus has been in the financial services, healthcare, and government markets.

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[edit] Revenue

In 2005, Tumbleweed earned approximately $US 50 million in gross revenue from the sale of their products and services. Of that, approximately $US 3 million was from licensing their patents.[2]

[edit] Awards

In January of 2007, Tumbleweed's MailGate™ 5550 was named SC magazine’s Best of 2006 "Recommended" award in the Anti-Spam category.[3]

[edit] Patents

Tumbleweed has a patent portfolio covering their innovations, namely 22 issued US utility patents[4] and one issued US design patent.

US patent 6192407 is one of several owned by Tumbleweed that relates to document delivery systems that generate a unique URL for intended recipients of a document in order to deliver that document. Tumbleweed has licensed this and related patents in their patent portfolio to 29 companies.[5] They have also had to file several patent infringement lawsuits in an attempt to get those that have used this technology without a license to pay at least a reasonable royalty in order to continue to use it. Those that have been sued include:

  • PayPal,[6] This suit has been settled. Terms of the settlement have not been disclosed.
  • Hallmark Cards,[7] This suit has been settled. Hallmark agreed to take a license.
  • Yahoo! and HSBC Bank USA,[8] This suit has been settled. The terms have been described by Yahoo! and HSBC lawyers as favorable to Yahoo! and HSBC.
  • DST Systems and NewRiver[9] This suit has been settled. DST Systems and NewRiver will pay Tumbleweed four cents for each delivery of electronic information using a personalized, trackable URL.

Overall, Tumbleweed earns about 6% of its revenue from patent licensing.

[edit] Competitors

Major competitors of Tumbleweed include[10]:

[edit] References

[edit] See also

[edit] External links