January 2011 - The Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) announced the commencement of the Information Technology Academic Collaboration (ITAC)’s Patent Filing Program (PFP) through supporting the filing of two patents in the fields of arithmetic algorithms software and cloud computing.

ITIDA provides grants to finance some of the expenses of the patent-filing process by 80% of actual cost (no more than $15000 per patent after obtaining initial approval from one of the approved international patents offices. The grant covers professional fees, official fees, and charges for filing a patent anywhere in the world.

The idea of the first invention, “A Decimal Fully Parallel Floating-Point Fused-Multiply-Add Unit” deals with a new product in the form of a coprocessor that can plugged as an accelerator card in computers. This invention increases the speed of mathematical processes of financial applications used by companies, such as communications companies and banks with large customer database and huge financial transactions.

Moreover, ITIDA financed a patent for a new technology in the field of cloud computing to conduct virtual training courses. Cloud Niners; the patent owner, will implement a method for conducting a virtual training session in virtual labs with first and second training objectives having first and second validation paths, respectively. These labs reduce the logistic costs of the ordinary labs and perform efficiently. Also, the virtual labs idea will enable the trainees to resume training at anytime and from everywhere.

Mr. Yasser El-Kady, ITIDA CEO, maintained that supporting Egyptian patents is of great importance since it directly feeds into encouraging creative ideas and spurring innovation. These are the main pillars around which the MCIT strategy revolves. Such strategy is being implemented by the Technology innovation and entrepreneurship center (TIEC) to increase Egypt’s share of intellectual property, especially that which may be applied and from whose export benefits may arise.

In addition, ITIDA signed collaboration and finance contracts for three Advanced research proposals in the fields of e-content and cyber security through The Advanced Research Projects (ARP). This program opens the door for college and research centers’ researchers in cooperation with IT companies to present their innovative research projects up to developing a prototype. The evaluation and selection process accomplished by ITIDA, is being done in cooperation with more than 100 ICT experts and research bodies, ITIDA provides grants for the winning projects of up to a million pounds per project.

The 1st advanced research project aims to implement an opinion and trend analysis tool in Arabic texts on the internet. Even though many comparable tools have come into being for English, no such tool is available for Arabic up till now.

The 2nd research project implements an industrial model for a multilingual e-book reader for children featuring a storytelling option. The project features an integrated system of many other components such as the e-portal through which e-books (featuring text, pictures, and audio) can be reviewed, purchased, and sent to the e-reader. The e-reader may be a device in itself or an application on smart phones.

Revolving around the cyber security, the 3rd project aims to develop software to boost Wi-Fi networks security by means of using advanced technology based mainly on information theories and algorithms. This effort laid the foundation of developing a prototype for Wi-Fi networks security.

On the other hand, ITIDA marked the 31th of January as the last due date for receiving graduation projects applications by concerned colleges which facilitates financing graduation projects. Such service is a contribution on the part of ITIDA in terms of boosting innovation and creativity in the ICT industry.