TRLabs Patent Licensed for Several Million Dollars

August 06, 2009 -- Edmonton – A fifteen year old patent central to efficient memory synchronization has generated several million dollars in licensing revenues. The revenues come as a result of a patent licensing and enforcement project initiated by TRLabs involving 16 major electronics companies.

"This globally commercialized innovation reflects the research excellence that exists at TRLabs," says Robert Tasker, President & CEO, TRLabs. "As an organization that develops and owns intellectual property on behalf of our academic, industry, and government members, it's critical that we maximize our leverage of this investment in our future. We pursue intellectual property matters vigorously to encourage our research team to share and develop compelling, industry relevant ideas with us."

The focus of license negotiations is USA Patent 5,361,277 issued November 1, 1994 – Method and Apparatus for Clock Distribution and for Distributed Clock Synchronization. In layman's terms, the technology revolves around increased efficiency and speed of computer chips derived from 'clock synchronization.' In a computer chip, each chip component performs a specific function. However, every component needs to share the same clock – in the same manner that choir members need to share the same tempo and timing to perform a song. The patent prescribes a simple and elegant methodology to perform that task, regardless of the actual physical locations of the components (important in increasingly distributed computing environments), and their relative position with each other.

The inventor of the technology, Dr. Wayne Grover (TRLabs Research Scientist and University of Alberta Professor) has received a TRLabs Commercialization Award as a share of proceeds of the licensing agreements. The long-standing Commercialization Award rewards substantial contribution to successful commercialization of a TRLabs technology. "This award is in keeping with TRLabs' practice to ensure that a big 'win' is shared with inventors to nurture the link between market-oriented innovation and financial reward," says Tasker.

The Commercialization Award complements TRLabs' creation of an annual Innovation Prize in 2007 to financially reward technologies generated within TRLabs judged to have a high commercialization potential and to be of interest to industry. The Commercialization Award and the Innovation Prize reflect TRLabs’ emphasis on nurturing the linkage between invention, industry relevance, and reward.

About TRLabs
TRLabs is a tri-partite, not-for-profit applied research information and communication technology consortium with an industry-led pre-competitive research and development program. TRLabs fast tracks innovation to market by creating innovative technologies, training students, and working with its partners to accelerate technology commercialization. Labs in Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Regina, and Winnipeg employ 249. With 71 partner members representing a unique synergy of industry, government, and university, technology and applications research focuses on three research themes: Connected Media; eHealth; and eHome. In its 23-year existence, TRLabs has trained 904 highly skilled university graduates, created 369 technologies adopted for use by companies, and generated 83 active patents (issued or filed).

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