Giving Canadian companies a boost through licensing agreements

Small and medium-sized companies often need access to specialized technical information to make it in today's fast-paced information technology product development.

Gaining technological advantage and keeping it is one of the keys to successes. Technology transferred from Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC) gave a competitive edge to Northwood Technologies, a Canadian company that was set to become a big player in the global telecommunications scene.

As Canada's leading laboratory specializing in collaborative R&D in advanced telecommunications, CRC has a mission to support small and medium-sized high-technology enterprises like Northwood, with the ultimate goal of helping to create a stronger, more innovative and competitive Canadian economy.

This Success Story shows how the process can work.

The technology

In the 1970s, CRC research scientist Frank Palmer did early pioneering work in the area of VHF/UHF propagation and created a very powerful radio prediction program, called Predict. The propagation prediction program was modifed and further developed by research scientist Jim Whitteker to its current form. It is used for estimating radio signal strengths on terrestrial paths at VHF and UHF, given transmitter location and power and the location of potential receivers. By performing calculations for a series of radial paths from the transmitter, a service coverage map can be estimated.

The collaboration

In 1997, Northwood Technologies, an Ottawa-area developer and provider of wireless telecom network planning software, became interested in the technology. It was given a copy of the CRC-Predict source code software under a loan agreement, in order to study its properties and evaluate its potential for integration into its flagship product deciBel Planner. The company was also granted a non-exclusive licence to integrate the CRC-Predict into Northwood's deciBel Planner® software product. Sales of the product during its first year of integration were so brisk, that it became apparent to Northwood that it had a value-added technology that needed to be a long-term player for the company. To gain a competitive edge over its international rivals, Northwood sought an exclusive licence from CRC.

CRC-Predict is considered to be one of the most accurate prediction models available, and it has been licensed, as part of deciBel Planner, to wireless operators worldwide.

The negotiations

Negotiations for exclusivity were complicated by the fact that CRC needed to maintain commercial exploitation rights to CRC-Predict in the broadcasting field and to be able to use the software for broadcast regulatory use to meet Industry Canada's requirements.

An exclusive licence, outside the field of broadcast applications, was signed in March 2001, after more than a year of discussions and negotiations.

Completion of the deal can be credited to the perseverance of the negotiating teams for CRC and Northwood Technologies.

The results

This R&D collaboration and technology transfer had a positive impact on the Canadian economy. In the first year of the exclusive licence, CRC collected $170,000 in royalty revenue from Northwood's sales of deciBel Planner. Based on continuing strong sales, over the next five years, a minimum of CAD$1.25 million in royalties is anticipated to be earned by CRC. The majority of this royalty revenue is reinvested in support of radio propagation research at CRC.

In May 2001 Northwood Technologies was acquired by Marconi plc, and became a key part of Marconi's Wireless business unit. The headquarters of the R&D operations of Marconi Wireless are located on Innovation Drive in Kanata, Ont. This group has the global mandate to develop software tools to plan, build and optimise 2 G, 2.5 G and 3 G wireless networks.

In January 2002, Marconi Wireless made its first major corporate sale to Sprint USA.

For more information, contact Kevin Shackell.