Here's how it works: A researcher studying cancer gene homologues at a California university wants to tap into the Celera database, which runs on a Compaq Tru64 system in Maryland, to get the latest data on related genes. As the researcher logs on to the Celera Discover System, eRights intercepts the request and assesses the researcher's relationship to the university, the school's license subscription, and what kind of access should be allowed. The digital-rights management program updates the university's records to log this use of the system, letting the researcher search, retrieve, and view raw data.

ERights has stabilized the service and also lets Celera offer more granular subscription options to its base of customers in the biotechnology, medical, biological research, and pharmaceutical industries, scientific applications specialist Todd Pihl says. The software manages subscriptions ranging from individuals to multi-institutional packages by categorizing users and determines access rights based on a variety of subscription-related attributes. "It provided us with a repository that we could use to put customers in a hierarchy," Web team leader Jim Jordan says. ERights also lets Celera make changes to access rights as genome databases are added to the service. The system uses business objects to represent groups and users, and when a database is added, an IT administrator needs only to point and click on groups or users to add access or send upgrade offers.

Most companies aren't ready to use digital-rights management in such a fashion; they lack the content strategy needed to extract value from the technology. "A large percentage of companies haven't really thought about this, or they've thought about it only in regard to Web-site content, which is only the tip of the iceberg," says Chan Preston, managing director of digital content management at BearingPoint, formerly KPMG Consulting. "They don't realize they have content that can be monetized."

Mitretek likes to be ahead of the market, Copeland says.

There are those who expect that realization to come soon. Mitretek Systems Inc., a not-for-profit scientific-research and systems-engineering company that helps federal agencies evaluate technologies, is rolling out a companywide archive in which it will store product evaluations, security assessments, and any other data it produces during client engagements. The project gives Mitretek an opportunity to evaluate digital-rights management technologies such as AirZip Inc.'s Website Secure tool for protecting image-intensive Web content. "We attempt to get ahead of the market so when our customers ask about technologies like digital-rights management, we understand how they work," says Dennis Copeland, senior manager of the digital identity authentication and authorization group. "We're trying to show that sensitive things can be protected and controlled."

With such efforts to secure access to digital content in B-to-B settings becoming more commonplace, vendors can only blame themselves for how long it's taken digital-rights management demand to blossom outside the entertainment world, says InterTrust executive VP Talal Shamoon. They were so eager to go after the lowest-hanging fruit -- movies and music -- that they forgot there was much more widespread potential. "In some ways, we're the victims of our own marketing," Shamoon says.

In the coming years, Shamoon not only expects companies to increase their focus on protecting many forms of intellectual property, but he says the onslaught of Web services will fuel adoption of rights management by companies looking to protect software infrastructures that face potential exposure over the Web.

Software vendor LogicLibrary Inc. has figured this out. The 20-person company's core product, Logidex, is designed to help companies better manage their software-development assets. That can mean using Web services to expose those assets via online libraries or providing tools that help developers or external partners identify Web services available to them in the application-development process.

LogicLibrary has embedded eMeta's eRights into Logidex to give customers the ability to control access to software assets such as components, legacy applications, or best practices, as well as software-development projects. For instance, if an IT department wants to make software components available to developers via Web services, an IT manager can set up rules dictating which developers would have rights to access which tools, based on the development roles they play. "They're not so much trying to hide assets from their developers," says VP and co-founder Brent Carlson. Rather, they're trying to control and manage those assets.