Our Mission

International Characters has the mission to make the world's fastest XML/Unicode/text processing software engine and to work with a network of partners to provide an extended family of high performance products in a variety of application areas. Our current and future products in this extended family will be available as open source software. International Characters also offers commercial licenses to its engine and products throughout its extended family. Our goal is that International Characters be a one-stop shop for all your licensing and support needs in highest-performance XML/Unicode/text processing software applications.

Although International Characters makes available its patented and patent-pending technologies free for open-source applications including applications of our open-source competitors, commercial licenses to these technologies are available exclusively through International Characters and selected partners. Commercial licenses are generally required whenever (a) open source software is taken closed/modified for commercial use, (b) combinations of open source and closed software that are covered by one or more of our patent claims are made and sold, and/or (c) open source and/or proprietary software is combined and sold with special purpose hardware.

To hear more about IC's patent and licensing strategy you can watch an interview with Fred Popowich (CEO of IC) and Larry Rosen, (Director of IC, and author of Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law, Prentice Hall, 2004) at http://www.linux.com/feature/130947.

Our Origins

International Characters is a technology spin-off company initially based on the research work of Dr. Rob Cameron (CTO of IC) carried out at Simon Fraser University. We host our open source software through SFU's Centre for Open Software Technology and Applications Research..