Networking software firm to try its IP againSteve BushIntellectual property from liquidated Bristol embedded software company Esgem is to re-emerge.
We are going to do something with it, said the founder and former CEO of Esgem Stephen Maudsley. I am not quite in a position to say who is involved or what is going to happen.
Esgem went into voluntary liquidation in October 2002. It was a case of getting into the market with a new product at the wrong time, said Maudsley. The target markets were digital TV and mobile phones. They [these markets] are moving a bit slower than everyone involved expected.
Esgem was developing test software for distributed intelligence systems which isolates problems when products, including mobile phones, home entertainment networks and automotive systems, are in the field.
Assayer, as the test software is known, works on systems in which code is distributed. At the moment intelligent phones are still controlled from the [network] centre, said Maudsley. Now we are starting to see things like the Orange SPV and the O2 handset running Windows, and Motorola Linux phones, where the centre is not in control because people can download other software onto them.
Maudsley sees applications for Assayer emerging.
Quite who has the rights to the IP behind Assayer is being kept under wraps. People I know own it and I am involved, is all Maudsley would say.
Assayer was based on software techniques first developed in the late 1970s called CSP, or communicating sequential processes.
Other assets of Esgem, which was originally launched on funding from unnamed private investors, have been dispersed.
Tangible assets were minimal and were sold at auction, said liquidator Graham Randall of Bristol-based Numerica.