University of Illinois and Netscape Communications Reach Agreement

Champaign, Ill. (December 21, 1994) -- The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Netscape Communications Corporation (formerly known as Mosaic Communications) have reached an agreement that leaves Netscape free to market its products without interference. Also confirmed in the agreement was Netscape's decision to change its corporate name and not use the names MOSAIC or NCSA MOSAIC, which are trademarks of the university.

The MOSAIC web browser software was developed at the university's National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Marc Andreessen and several other founders of Netscape Communications were members of the NCSA development team that developed this software, which quickly became the standard among graphical web browsers. On May 19, 1994, the university entered into a master commercial licensing agreement for NCSA MOSAIC with Spyglass, Inc. of Naperville, Illinois, a company also founded by university alumni.

Under the terms of the December 21 agreement, Netscape is free to market its software without a license from the university or Spyglass, and Netscape will not use the MOSAIC trademark or logo to identify its products. The university is not asserting any wrongdoing on the part of Netscape. Other details of the agreement were not disclosed.

"Everyone is a winner in our agreement with Netscape," said Michael Aiken, chancellor of the university. "We have protected our intellectual property and our licensees. Netscape is free to compete actively in a dynamic marketplace, and we are able to point with pride to the fact that several alumni of the university are principals of these vigorous companies."

"We are pleased that the university is not interfering with the marketing of our independently developed products and that their alumni are not being accused of doing something wrong," said Jim Clark, chairman and CEO of Netscape Communications.

Netscape Communications, the Netscape Communications logo, Netscape, Netscape Commerce Server, Netscape Communications Server, Netscape Proxy Server and Netscape News Server are trademarks of Netscape Communications Corporation. NCSA Mosaic is a trademark of the University of Illinois. All other product names are trademarks of their respective companies.