COMPUTRONICS Holdings has secured a worldwide licence from the University of Idaho in the US for its precision centre pivot watering system, avoiding a potential stand-off over intellectual property.
The company had been working for five years to perfect a precision centre pivot watering system and, while taking out intellectual property protection, found the concept had been patented by the University of Idaho.
As the university did not have a commercial product it seemed an opportune time to seek a licensing agreement and the exclusive worldwide licensing agreement was put in place.
The university’s National Environmentally Sound Production Agriculture Laboratory chairman, Craig Kvein, was also actively lobbying for a plan to introduce Variable Rate Irrigation in Georgia.
That resulted in Computronics receiving an order for 35 Farmscan 3000 VRI systems valued at about $200,000.
There are more than 10,000 centre pivot systems in Georgia alone and more than 200,000 in the US.
Computronics CEO Ole Hansen said: “It was refreshing to see the commercially realistic attitude of the University of Idaho and its desire to enable its discoveries to be delivered to the market”.
The Computronics VRI system uses a Farmscan 3000 controller and a global positioning system on the end of the travelling boom to determine its position and thereby control the watering regimes for the soil types below.