Tumbleweed Receives a Favorable Settlement of Its Patent Infringement Lawsuit

Tumbleweed to Receive $0.04 per Delivery Via Personalized, Trackable URLs

Redwood City, CA - December 17, 2002 - Tumbleweed® Communications Corp.(Nasdaq:TMWD - News), a leading provider of secure messaging applications for businesses and government organizations using the Internet, today announced that service providers DST Systems, Inc. and NewRiver, Inc. have agreed to pay a significant initial undisclosed amount and a royalty of four cents per delivery of electronic information using a personalized, trackable URL (as covered in the claims of its patents) in settlement of patent infringement lawsuit C 02-05087 JF, brought in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against a customer of NewRiver and DST. "We are very pleased to announce our differences with DST and NewRiver are now behind us," stated Bernard J. Cassidy, Tumbleweed's Vice President and General Counsel. "Tumbleweed's intellectual property is a key corporate asset we are pledged to protect. We are encouraged by the settlement and will continue to enforce Tumbleweed's patents in two additional lawsuits we filed, Tumbleweed v. PayPal, Inc. and Tumbleweed v. Yahoo!, Inc., as well as through private licensing efforts." Tumbleweed's patent portfolio includes 9 granted U.S. patents and 20 pending U.S. patent applications in addition to another 60 pending worldwide. The patent portfolio broadly covers secure communication, including the binding of content to electronic identity, over Internet standards.

About Tumbleweed
Tumbleweed is a leading provider of secure messaging applications for businesses and government organizations using the Internet. Tumbleweed's robust policy-based framework empowers organizations to safely share and protect critical information, increase customer loyalty and privacy and dramatically reduce costs. Tumbleweed is trusted by hundreds of blue-chip customers including American Express, Amgen Inc., Bank of America Securities, Catholic Healthcare West, ChevronTexaco Corp., Dell Computer Corporation, National City Corporation, Oppenheimer Funds, Inc., The Regence Group (Blue Cross/Blue Shield), TD Waterhouse Investor Services, Inc., the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Navy. Tumbleweed Communications was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Redwood City, California.

Tumbleweed cautions that forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based on its plans and expectations at the time of the issuance of the press release, and that a number of factors could cause the actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements made at the time of issuance. These factors are described in the Safe Harbor statement below.

Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected, particularly with respect to the outcome of any legal matter or any legal or judicial interpretation of Tumbleweed's patents. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "potential," "continue," "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," and similar expressions. For further cautions about the risks of investing in Tumbleweed, we refer you to the documents Tumbleweed files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly Tumbleweed's Form 10-K filed March 30, 2002 and Form 10-Q filed November 14, 2002. Tumbleweed assumes no obligation to update information contained in this press release.