Source3, a startup focusing on protection of user-generated content which maintained an office at HQRaleigh and was co-founded by former executives at Geomagic in the Triangle, is now part of Facebook.
The company, which had raised more than $4 million in venture capital, announced its acquisition by the social media giant on its website.
Source3’s headquarters was located in New York, and Facebook says the company will be based out of its New York office.
Vanessa Chan, a spokesperson for Facebook, told TechCrunch: “We’re excited to work with the Source3 team and learn from the expertise they’ve built in intellectual property, trademarks and copyright.”
Co-founders Tom Kurke and Tom Simon both worked at Geomagic, which focused on 3D technology before being acquired by a South Carolina company.
The original focus for Source3 was 3D content but later expanded.
“We see significant friction in this ecosystem, but also tremendous opportunity for industry growth. We saw firsthand how connecting content and technology could drive massive opportunities for monetization and we believe there are substantial parallels in the 3D content industry.” Source3 CEO Patrick Sullivan said when the company launched. “We intend to simplify how 3D content is licensed, monetized and produced.”
Other Source3 founders helped launch RightsFlow, which was acquired by Google in 2011. Its technology is currently used by YouTube and Google Play.
Source3’s statement at its website about the Facebook deal follows:
We’re joining Facebook
“At Source3, we set out to recognize, organize and analyze branded intellectual property in user-generated content, and we are proud to have identified products across a variety of areas including sports, music, entertainment and fashion. Along the way, we built an end-to-end platform to manage online IP and establish relationships with brands.
“Today, we wanted to let everyone know that we’ve decided to continue our journey with Facebook. We’re excited to bring our IP, trademark and copyright expertise to the team at Facebook and serve their global community of two billion people, who consume content, music, videos and other IP every day.
“We feel great about this next step in our journey, and we thank everyone who helped us get to where we are today – we couldn’t have gotten this far without immense support from our investors, advisors, employees and others. We can’t wait to see what’s next!”
