BackWeb Technologies Receives Patent on Polite Technology from U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

SAN JOSE, California - July 8, 1999 - BackWeb® Technologies (Nasdaq: BWEB), a leading provider of Priority Internet communication infrastructure and applications software for the extended enterprise, announced it has received a patent on its Polite Agent™ technology from the United States Patent and Trademark Office. BackWeb's Polite™ communications senses idle bandwidth, and uses those periods to efficiently transmit data through networks. This avoids interruptions of other applications and activities, such as accessing e-mail and the Web.

"With this patent, BackWeb further strengthens the barriers to entry for other companies that may consider developing products similar to our Priority Internet communication software,'' said Eli Barkat, CEO of BackWeb Technologies. ``With Polite, BackWeb has eliminated bandwidth issues for companies that want to deliver time-sensitive, business-critical information to their extended enterprise of customers, partners and employees."

The Polite Agent monitors the network activity of the client workstation and communicates with BackWeb servers only when the connection is idle. For this reason, companies are able to proactively deliver multi-media rich files of any size without impacting other applications on the desktop. BackWeb combined its patented technology with data compression, byte-level differential updating and interruptible communications to enable companies to reduce the amount of data to be transmitted.

Companies using BackWeb's patented Polite communications are found in four main industries: Technology, Telecommunications, Finance and Retail. They include U S WEST, Cisco, Compaq, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard Company, SAP AG, Goldman Sachs, Deloitte Consulting, Network Associates, the Baan Company, Schlumberger Dowell, Rite Aid and Carlson Wagonlit Travel.

About BackWeb Technologies
BackWeb Technologies is a leading offline Web software company. BackWeb extends the value of technology investments by offering mobile and remote employees offline access to portals, intranets and other Web-based applications and content. The company's products reduce network costs and improve the productivity of an increasingly mobile workforce. At the core of BackWeb's products is its patented Polite® synchronization technology that can distribute large amounts of data even over narrow bandwidth connections. BackWeb® customers include market leaders such as Boehringer Ingelheim, Centocor, Eastman Kodak, GE Healthcare, Guidant, HP, KLA Tencor, Lam Research, Pfizer and more than one hundred other companies. BackWeb also has strategic reseller alliances with software industry leaders: Plumtree, SAP and IBM. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. and Rosh Ha'ayin, Israel. For more information, visit www.backweb.com or call (800) 863-0100.

Statements in this news release, which are not purely historical, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Securities laws, including statements of beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Examples of these statements include, but are not limited to, the ability of BackWeb software to allow customers to gain mobile, disconnected use of their portals and help increase field sales and field service productivity, the integration of BackWeb software with BEA products will help developers extend portal applications for offline use without changing the way they work, and the ability of the resulting applications to help field sales and service organizations realize maximum productivity, cost savings, and process acceleration gains while disconnected from the network. Actual results could differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include unforeseen technological issues related to use of the BackWeb software, deployment issues related to implementation, unforeseen software errors, competitive factors and business and expense factors that may affect the perceived efficiencies from use of BackWeb's products, and the risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in BackWeb's periodic reports and registration statements filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. BackWeb assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release.