OTTAWA,ONTARIO– Cheryl Gallant MP, Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke, as a Member of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, was pleased recently to invite Lianne Ing, Vice-President of Bubble Technology Industries Inc to appear in Ottawa as an expert witness to speak about that company’s experiences with intellectual property (IP) protection.
“It was a pleasure to welcome Bubble Tech Vice-President Lianne Ing to speak to the Industry Committee about IP,” remarked Cheryl Gallant, MP. “Committee members appreciated hearing directly from a small business like Bubble Tech, who are engaged in research and development. Parliamentarians need to understand how a small business commercializes it’s research. We also need to know if Government is a help or a hindrance to that process.”
The Federal Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, is currently examining Canada’s intellectual property regime, focusing on if and how the Copyright Act should be modernized, particularly in the context of today’s technological advances.
Hansard, Standing Committee, Industry, Science and Technology
Mrs. Cheryl Gallant: Bubble Technology in and of itself is a consequence of science-generated at AECL. We had the intellectual property there that was commercialized. You’ve spoken quite a bit about the intellectual property generated by Bubble Technologies and commercializing. Have you experienced any situations given that AECL has about 12 patents a year that it generates and taking those that they’re currently working on and transferring them and commercializing the patents from AECL recently.
Ms. Lianne Ing: We haven’t had any recent collaborations with AECL in that regard. A lot of the focus of R & D at AECL in the recent years has been focused more on nuclear reactor technologies and supporting technologies. Our field of research has moved more towards defence and security applications so there hasn’t been a strong overlap. However, in the last year or so as people look at restructuring AECL there’s been a renewed focus at the Chalk River site in terms of reaching out to collaborate and establish greater linkages with partners such as ourselves. In the past year we’ve actually started some renewed collaborations with AECL trying to take advantage of some of the facilities that they have available at the Chalk River site.
Bubble Technology Industries was founded in 1988 and is located inChalk River,Ontario. It is an innovative, 50-person company, Canadian owned which provides products, services and contract research primarily in the areas of radiation detection and explosive detection. It has over 400 customers in 25 different countries and have conducted over 100 research programs for customers around the world and inCanada. It’s technology has been used to protect people and infrastructure at major events including the U.S.Presidential inauguration, the Super Bowl, the World Series and the Olympics. It’s technology has flown on over a dozen space missions to support research aimed at protecting astronauts from radiation hazards and is also used to protect nuclear submariners while they are deployed at sea. It has a creative, highly skilled staff. The cornerstone of it’s success is the ability to generate innovative ideas and then carry those ideas through all stages of research, development, production and deployment.