Industry committee  Well....

Industry committee  Yes. I guess I'm surprised you started with me, as we don't necessarily consider ourselves a small or medium enterprise.

Industry committee  I guess I would briefly say that we certainly do think it's important. It's where you're going to foster innovation. The focus on small and medium-sized enterprises, from that perspective, will allow the fostering of innovation. For them to be able to protect intellectual propert

Industry committee  Certainly, it goes into the calculation, but I'm not sure it would affect our investment in R and D, no.

Industry committee  We're in a slightly different circumstance. We're a much larger company. We have over $1.2 billion in revenue. We have a tremendous number of R and D engineers, both in Canada and elsewhere, so, yes, it's an important component of it. But I wouldn't be prepared to say today that

Industry committee  I would agree with that, but I guess I would expand on it, perhaps to balance it. You mentioned that the U.S. is more litigious. Part of the reason, in a defensive strategy, for filing patents and making sure that you have robust prior art is to protect yourself in that circumsta

Industry committee  It may very well be the case that we've done a calculation on it, but I don't have that answer.

Industry committee  I'm afraid I don't have an answer to that question.

Industry committee  We certainly believe that software should be patentable. We have a defensive strategy, and as a result of that, companies such as Open Text would typically focus more on prior art than on the filing of patents. But you're absolutely correct that it is patentable within the U.S.,

Industry committee  I'm not sure I'm prepared to talk about Nortel here. You're quite right that Nortel had 55,000 patents, and it ended up being the largest valued asset of Nortel through the bankruptcy process. The various assets were auctioned off, and I believe it was $4.5 billion that they re

Industry committee  Again, we're drifting into a different topic a little bit, from my perspective. I do believe it is important to protect the intellectual property of the country and the companies within Canada. We have certain cost barriers, and we have uncertainty within that regime today that

Industry committee  I think in the two buildings in Waterloo we would have in excess of 800 employees today.

Industry committee  Internationally, with our recent acquisition of a company called EasyLink, we're now over 5,000 employees.

Industry committee  First of all, we certainly use patents less for protecting our intellectual property, but I have to say, as I said in my comments, that to a certain extent that's because of the cost and expense of the process we're required to go through. We place significant importance, as a re

Industry committee  Certainly from our perspective, and because we're an acquisitive company, Open Text is created by.... Over 50 companies have been acquired over the past eight to ten years. A lot of the patents that we will receive as a result of that M and A initiate in the United States. As a c