We hope to have an interoperable system between now and six months," Peters said. When launched, the new DRM system will be endorsed by a large number of electronics companies and media companies such as film distributors and music publishers, he said. "When we launch we want to give guarantees that it will be sufficiently supported," Peters. Philips is Europe's largest maker of consumer electronics and the world's No. 3, while Sony is the biggest. Intertrust is the biggest holder of DRM patents, and all digital music players need Intertrust's technology to develop their own DRM system. Philips and Sony bought Intertrust early this year to make sure key DRM patents would be available to everyone in the electronics industry, and also because they saw that DRM technology would become a crucial part of digital media. They have said they would make them available on reasonable terms.

It seems Philips and Sony have bought the right company at the right time and are going to compete with Microsoft in the DRM market. Microsoft is currently selling it's DRM package with Windows Media and already has a decent userbase. Philips and Sony hope their solution will be make DRM even more widely accepted. Read more here.

Source: Yahoo.com