The company began trading on the United States-based NASDAQ stock exchange in July 1999. Trend Micro was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1998 under the ticker 4704. In 1996 the two companies agreed to a two-year continuation of the agreement in which Trend was allowed to globally market the ServerProtect product under its own brand alongside Intel's LANDesk brand. In 1993, Novell began bundling the product with its network operating system. Intel paid royalties to Trend Micro for sales of LANDesk Virus Protect in the United States and Europe, while Trend paid royalties to Intel for sales in Asia. It then made an agreement with CPU maker Intel, under which it produced an anti-virus product for local area networks ( LANs) for sale under the Intel brand. In 1992, Trend Micro took over a Japanese software firm to form Trend Micro Devices and established headquarters in Japan. Shortly after establishing the company, its founders moved headquarters to Taipei.
The company was established with proceeds from Steve Chang's previous sale of a copy protection dongle to a United States-based Rainbow Technologies. The company was founded in 1988 in Los Angeles by Steve Chang, his wife, Jenny Chang, and her sister, Eva Chen (陳怡樺).
