Kevin Bermeister

In 2011, BDE subsidiary Kinetech acquired a majority interest in PersonalWeb LLC [1], a Tyler, Texas-based technology company. PersonalWeb develops its software based in part on the 13 pending and issued patents in the Truenames Patent Portfolio.

In 2008, BDE acquired the Kazaa Trademark and relaunched Kazaa with music licenses from major music labels Universal, Sony, Warner Music Group and EMI, major independent record labels, and leading music publishers.

In 2006 BDE, Altnet and Kazaa settled major litigation with leading music and motion picture industry plaintiffs. Since then, Bermeister has focused on building and acquiring content, technology and distribution assets for BDE.

During 2006, BDE acquired Kinetech Inc., a company with interests in patents and intellectual property licensing relating primarily to certain key distributed technologies that had been licensed by Altnet since 2002 and important to P2P storage and Global File Registry businesses of Altnet. Kinetech's patent and technology portfolio is often referred to as the True Name Patent Portfolio.

Bermeister founded Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc. in 1996, focusing on 3D graphics streaming and compression for which it was granted 8 patents. BDE was the founding member of the Distributed Industry Computing Association. The company developed a number of Internet interests including Altnet, a joint venture with Joltid Ltd., to develop and market secure distributed storage for content using P2P technology to reduce distribution costs and reach new audiences. In 2003 Altnet, using its distributed storage technology, became the largest provider of secure DRM content, having distributed 75 million licensed files to users of various P2P file sharing software applications. Another initiative undertaken by Altnet under Bermeister's stewardship is Global File Registry, which enables governments and copyright owners to police the distribution of illegal or infringing material over distributed systems and the Internet.

In 1994, Bermeister and his property consortium Jacfun negotiated rights to property at Sydney's Darling Harbour and established the interactive Sega World Sydney amusement park, operated through a joint venture including shareholders Sega Enterprises Japan, Mitsubishi Corp. and Mitsui Corp.

In 1983, Bermeister established Ozisoft, one of the first interactive multimedia companies. By 1990, Ozisoft was Australia's largest video games distributor. In 1992, Bermeister and Mark Dyne successfully led a management buyout, together with Sega Enterprises, to form Sega Ozisoft Pty Limited representing exclusively the world's largest video game publisher.

Kevin Bermeister (born 1960 in South Africa) is an entrepreneur that has developed several businesses in the computer, multimedia and Internet industries.