LONDON, June 13 /PRNewswire/ --

- Visual Matching Succeeds where Text-based Matching Fails

http://www.trace.com, an on-line, real-time registry of valuables for
identifying the ownership and authenticity of valuable goods, announced today
that it has identified a painting at a US museum that may have been looted
during the Nazi era. The images appear identical despite very different text
descriptions.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080613/AQF040 )

Trace.com experts estimate the value of the painting at over US$250,000.
It was originally reported looted by the Belgian government.

The online registry has records of over 40,000 looted items from
government, law enforcement, and private sources, making it the largest,
online international resource of Nazi era looted art in the world. While the
Trace service is limited to the identification of reported missing, stolen
and looted items, the company has informed the Belgian government about the
potential find.

Using a combination of sophisticated text-based and visual matching
technologies, that transcends the limitations of solely text-based searching,
Trace works with auction houses, dealers, pawnbrokers and more to check
whether valuable items have been ever reported missing, stolen or looted. The
entire database of a wide range of lost and stolen valuables including
consumer electronics, jewellery and more includes over 420,000 items.

Jacob Khokhlov, Trace Head of Art Services, who researched the painting,
commented: "By building a comprehensive database of looted art, and making
much of this information available to the public for the first time, we are
confident that the project will contribute to the identification and return
of looted art that otherwise may have been lost to the victims' families
forever."

"It has been estimated that the Nazis systematically looted about 20% of
all Western art, and there remains 100,000 items reported looted at large."

Benny Arbel, CEO of Trace, said: "In this case, the pictures appear
identical but the descriptions are quite different, so such a match might not
appear in an ordinary text-based search. To make sure match results are
credible, Trace incorporates sophisticated visual matching technology, which
transcends the problems of text-based searching caused by differences in
descriptions, jargon or language."

How victims can identify stolen property using the Trace Looted Art
website:

Images: http://www.tracelootedart.com incorporates a highly sophisticated
image-matching technology that will allow images provided by victims to be
used to search items on the registry.

Descriptions: Families can enter descriptions of items -- whether from
memory or written documents. The text-based matching facility will identify
all items matching the description.

Preventing the future sale of looted art: Many of the items stolen by the
Nazis disappeared into private collections and Swiss bank vaults.
Occasionally these items reappear for sale at auctions. Major auction houses
check the Trace database before publishing their catalogues to make sure they
are not auctioning an item with questionable ownership. If a looted item is
searched, the appropriate authorities are alerted.

About the Trace Looted Art Project

Trace developed the Looted Art Project (http://www.tracelootedart.com) to
leverage its network of auction houses, dealers, museums, collectors and law
enforcement to help identify objects plundered by the Nazis. The
comprehensive database of Holocaust-Era looted art is checked against objects
for sale by dealers and auction houses.

About Trace

The Trace (http://www.trace.com) on-line, real-time registry of valuables
is the global standard for identifying the ownership and authenticity of
valuable goods. Trace database is used by auction houses, dealers, owners of
valuables, police and security organisations, retailers, luxury brands and
insurance companies.

Created by retail, insurance and hi-tech executives, Trace has the
commitment, talent and resources to create the world on-line standard for
verifying the validity and authenticity of used valuables in real time. Trace
is a limited company headquartered in the UK, with offices in Menlo Park,
California, and Tel Aviv, Israel.

Web site: http://www.trace.com