Sure. We've been successful in the Waterloo region in raising capital for start-up companies, in particular our university spinoffs. In fact the 15 companies we currently have in our Accelerator Centre have all managed to raise venture capital over the last 12 months.
But when you talk to the venture capitalists and the sophisticated angel investors, their number one concern is the ownership and protection of the intellectual property. If it's not clear to them who owns the IP, and if it has been protected through copyrights--or mostly through patents in our case, because we're dealing with technology, as opposed to a script--they simply won't invest. They will not make that first step to investing in something they know can be replicated elsewhere.
Without strong IP protection and the strong patent legislation that speaks to that, the chances of our raising capital for most of these companies would not have happened. Again, when the venture capitalists were surveyed, the number one issue was IP protection. That's why it's number one on our list too. Without it, we'd get nowhere.