IST 98 Announces Winners of the European Information Technology Prize
The three winners of this year's European Information Technology Prizes are a Swedish firm which has developed a system for the large-scale production of digital keys, a Greek company with a unique anti-copying system for CDs and a Spanish collaboration between a university and a TV manufacturer which has invented a new type of antenna for cellular phone operators. The three Grand Prize winners were awarded ECU 200 000 and trophies on Monday at IST 98, the Information Societies Technologies Conference in Vienna. The Austrian Chancellor, Viktor Klima, presented the prizes to iD2 Technologies of Stockholm, MLS Laserlock International Inc. of Greece, and the Spanish partnership between the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya and Sistemas Radiantes F. Moyano S.A.. iD2 Technologies, who produce a range of software for conducting electronic transactions over the Internet, were rewarded for their "iD2 certificate manager", a system for the large-scale production of highly secure RSA-keys and digital certificates for identification with potential for use by the public on the internet. MLS LaserLock International Inc. won their prize with the "LaserLock", the first copy protection system to be designed for CD-ROMs to prevent pirating of software applications. The LaserLock, consists of sophisticated code encryption software, a physical signature on the CD, and "debug prevention" engineering embedded in the software code. The third of the joint winners, the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and Sistemas Radiantes F. Moyano, won with the Fractus Antenna, an antenna for base stations in European cellular phone systems which is based on fractal shape technology. The antennas have the advantage of operating simultaneously on both GSM and DCS bands. Their research has been partially funded by the European Commission. The European Information Technology Prize is intended to reward excellence and to stimulate innovation in the information technology industry. An independent executive jury, appointed by Euro-CASE (the European Council of Applied Sciences and Engineering), selected the winners from a short list of 25 companies who, in turn, were each awarded ECU 5000. Next year the prize will be renamed "The European IST Prize". ITS 98 in Vienna was organised by the European Commission and the Austrian Ministry of Science and Transport. It is one of the largest meetings held during the year for experts from the Information Technology and Communications sector, and attracts over 3000 delegates from around the world.