ACT has reached an agreement in principle to form a Canada/Europe consortium to collaborate in government funded research and development initiatives. This was achieved through meetings held during the holiday season. Called the EUCan MultiCom program, the project was conceived by ACT and submitted to proposed European partners.
The European Partners in the consortium are: The National Gallery of London, England, who are doing research in the area of digital imaging of works of art; Thomson Broadband Systems of Rennes, France whose developments include ATM over high speed fibre optic cable TV networks; and NSM Aktiengesellschaft of Bingen am Rhein, Germany, who manufacture optical storage juke boxes. Other project participants are likely, albeit not at the partner level. These will principally be museums and suppliers participating in applications trials, as well as organizations participating in specific developments; potentially as subcontractors. Under the proposal, ACT will apply to the CANARIE program in Canada for funding contributions while the European partners will apply to the Fourth Framework program in the European Union. CANARIE has been awarded $80 million by Industry Canada to fund a three year program of R&D in Information Highway applications and technology development (see separate article in this newsletter), while the European Union has allocated the equivalent of $3.5 billion Canadian for R&D in Communications & Information Technologies with approximately $1 billion of that for Advanced Communications Technologies. The two programs are of equal term, with very similar applications timetables. As a result of negotiations by Canadian External Affairs, Canadian companies can collaborate with EU companies and institutes in the Information Technologies area. While each side must procure its own funding, they can collaborate in development activities under intellectual property sharing agreements they have negotiated. Under the terms of the proposal ACT expects to acquire under license agreements access to technology developed, either previously or as part of this program, by the European partners. This includes extremely high resolution and precise image capture technology, as well as image and multimedia data management and authoring tools. ACT will integrate partners' software and hardware technology into its suite of Cinemage client/server products for subsequent worldwide distribution under anticipated reciprocal marketing agreements.
A second generation proposal is currently being drafted in addition to a consortium working meeting planned in Europe for latter February. This will coincide with the G7 Ministers' meeting on the Information Society in Brussels.