Tim Williams explains that the use of modern digital data formats such as Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) and the Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) enables the on-line searching and publishing of data held in data repositories where the ownership rights over the intellectual property are controlled. Understanding the security and quality of the content of the documents emanating from such data repositories is vital for good business strategies to be defined. As the larger publishers move increasingly towards global trading, they will control and distribute their assets globally via the internet.