Certicom Licenses Intellectual Property to General Dynamics

This 15-year agreement allows General Dynamics to use ECC and other related patents from Certicom as the public-key security technology in any of its products for the commercial and defense sector. The adoption of ECC within the U.S. government is growing since the National Security Agency (NSA) selected ECC as the public-key cryptosystem to meet new, stronger security requirements under its crypto modernization program. According to the NSA, there are over one million high-grade devices in the U.S. government today that will need to be replaced to include stronger security based on ECC. ECC is a computationally efficient form of cryptography that offers equivalent security to other competing technologies but with much smaller key sizes. This results in faster computations, lower power consumption, as well as memory and bandwidth savings, thereby making it ideal for todays resource-constrained environments. Certicoms patent portfolio covers many key aspects of cryptography and ECC in particular, including software optimizations, efficient hardware implementations, methods to enhance the security, and various cryptographic protocols. In March 2004, Certicom announced a new growth strategy for its intellectual property licensing business that will extend Certicoms core business of embedded security to include the licensing of its extensive ECC-based patent portfolio to organizations that require software or hardware implementations of strong, efficient cryptography. Certicom is considered a pioneer in ECC research and implementations, backed by 20 years of experience. The company developed the industrys first toolkit to include ECC, which has since been adopted by over 300 organizations. Under the 15-year agreement, General Dynamics C4 will pay a one-time intellectual property license fee plus royalties on all products shipped that use Certicom intellectual property. Certicom is not able at this stage, to estimate the level of revenues that will be derived from this license or its materiality to Certicoms business.