Given the current climate, the timing of Austin, Texas start-up ioLogics looks exquisite.

It has a way of tracking intellectual property - and as the former head of Microsoft Research Nathan Myhrvold, the polymath now out trying to corner the IP market, recently observed, "Intellectual property is the new software."

ioLogics has a product called ioSentry that's just about to hit market after being tested by some brand name companies since late last year.

ioSentry is a transparent network software service that uses patent-pending technology to automate the protection and prosecution of patents, trade secrets, business and product plans, contracts and other confidential information in the form of documents, messages or web pages.

The browser-based software runs appliance-like on a dedicated commodity Linux server on the user's network. It integrates with the user's message, document, database, analytical and security programs.

Like an archangel with a fiery sword warding off poachers, it's supposed to bestride a company's e-mail, instant messaging and file sharing and operate in real-time and batch mode to stop the prohibited transmission of even derivative information.

The company compares ioSentry to a "specialized search engine" and says a publisher could use it to find all the places on the web where its copyrighted material turned up.

The software is meant to lower cost, increase speed and security, improve policy effectiveness, prevent theft and leaks, aid in legal discovery and analysis and enforce regulatory and policy compliance.

It's not supposed to have a one-for-one competitor. Potential rivals might have either ioLogics' security or forensics piece, but not both, according to the start-up's new CEO Tim Negris, a former VP with IBM Software and before that with Oracle. Negris has been brought in to chase sales and raise money. ioSentry is directed at policy makers and managers, investigators, analysts, prosecutors, litigators and the people responsible for regulatory compliance, so-called extrusion prevention and the prosecution of IP rights. The company is thinking most large companies in technology, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and financial services as well as government, private and academic research labs.

"Even in the most rigorous organizations," ioLogics says, "there are many different places and ways where confidential information can be compromised. As the numbers of people, connections and process layers that touch it increases, so does the risk of secret information falling into the wrong hands. The processes of collaboration, review, approval and disclosure are fraught with opportunities for innocent or criminal misuse of most forms of formal confidential information through messaging, clipboard, file sharing and other simple functions."

The company says that policy compliance, a company's typical first line of defense, is often voluntary and lacks any rigor in detecting and addressing violations. ioLogics blames the pace of policy change, the shortage of skilled overseers and the natural porosity of most contemporary networking infrastructures.

The company says that litigation - and the evidence suggests we're at the beginning of a litigation boom - depends on looking at massive amounts of e-mails, log file records and preserved documents and figuring out "who communicated what to whom and when."

The process of hunting for a needle in a haystack is tedious, time-consuming and error prone. It means reading huge quantities of irrelevant text to find a few items that matter and assimilating stuff like message timing and sequences, routing patterns and document access authorizations.

Well, ioSentry is supposed to give examiners, investigators, litigators and prosecutors an automated way to simplify the usually pricey discovery and forensic processes, find the relevant information quickly and provide the context of things like messages.

The company says ioSentry, which is in the pricing process, can find stored messages and documents on the basis of content, correspondents, identities, addresses, network routing and date stamps. Just the kind of thing Microsoft ought to have.