CERTICOM LICENSES INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY TO GENERAL DYNAMICS

15-year contract to use Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC)-based technology in products for commercial and defense sectors

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario – (January 12, 2005)– Certicom Corp. (TSX: CIC), the authority for strong, efficient cryptography, today announced that General Dynamics C4 Systems, a business unit of General Dynamics (NYSE: GD), has licensed Certicom's entire intellectual property portfolio of over 300 patents and patents pending. This 15-year agreement allows General Dynamics to use ECC and other related patents from Certicom as the public-key security technology in any of its products for the commercial and defense sector.

The adoption of ECC within the U.S. government is growing since the National Security Agency (NSA) selected ECC as the public-key cryptosystem to meet new, stronger security requirements under its crypto modernization program. According to the NSA, there are over one million high-grade devices in the U.S. government today that will need to be replaced to include stronger security based on ECC.

ECC is a computationally efficient form of cryptography that offers equivalent security to other competing technologies but with much smaller key sizes. This results in faster computations, lower power consumption, as well as memory and bandwidth savings, thereby making it ideal for today's resource-constrained environments. Certicom's patent portfolio covers many key aspects of cryptography and ECC in particular, including software optimizations, efficient hardware implementations, methods to enhance the security, and various cryptographic protocols.

"ECC security technology meets the demanding requirements of many customers, including the U.S. government," said Ian McKinnon, president and CEO of Certicom. "This agreement with General Dynamics represents another important validation of our ECC-based technology and a significant win for our intellectual property licensing business."

In March 2004, Certicom announced a new growth strategy for its intellectual property licensing business that will extend Certicom's core business of embedded security to include the licensing of its extensive ECC-based patent portfolio to organizations that require software or hardware implementations of strong, efficient cryptography. Certicom is considered a pioneer in ECC research and implementations, backed by 20 years of experience. The company developed the industry's first toolkit to include ECC, which has since been adopted by over 300 organizations.

Under the 15-year agreement, General Dynamics C4 will pay a one-time intellectual property license fee plus royalties on all products shipped that use Certicom intellectual property. Certicom is not able at this stage, to estimate the level of revenues that will be derived from this license or its materiality to Certicom's business.

About Certicom
Certicom Corp. (TSX:CIC) is the authority for strong, efficient cryptography required by software vendors and device manufacturers to embed security in their products. Adopted by the U.S. government’s National Security Agency (NSA), Certicom technologies for Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) provide the most security per bit of any known public key scheme, making it ideal for constrained environments. Certicom products and services are currently licensed to more than 300 customers including Motorola, Oracle, Research In Motion, Terayon, Texas Instruments and Unisys. Founded in 1985, Certicom is headquartered in Mississauga, ON, Canada, with offices in Ottawa, ON; Reston, VA; San Mateo, CA; and London, England. Visit www.certicom.com.

Certicom, Security Builder, Security Builder Crypto, Security Builder GSE, Security Builder IPSec, Security Builder Middleware,Security Builder PKI, Security Builder SSL, movianVPN, movianCrypt and movianMail are trademarks or registered trademarks of Certicom Corp. All other companies and products listed herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Forward-Looking Statements
Except for historical information contained herein, this news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. Factors that might cause a difference include, but are not limited to, those relating to the acceptance of mobile and wireless devices and the continued growth of e-commerce and m-commerce, the increase of the demand for mutual authentication in m-commerce transactions, the acceptance of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) technology as an industry standard, the market acceptance of our principal products and sales of our customer's products, the impact of competitive products and technologies, the possibility of our products infringing patents and other intellectual property of fourth parties, and costs of product development. Certicom will not update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof. More detailed information about potential factors that could affect Certicom's financial results is included in the documents Certicom files from time to time with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities.

The shares of the company described above have been offered only to qualified institutional buyers in reliance on Rule 144A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), and outside the United States pursuant to Regulation S of the Securities Act. The shares have not been registered under the Securities Act and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to a U.S. Person absent registration or an applicable exemption from registration requirements.

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any security and shall not constitute an offer, solicitation or sale in any jurisdiction in which such offering would be unlawful.

For further information, please contact:

For Certicom    
Tim Cox Brendan Ziolo  
ZingPR Certicom Corp.  
(650) 369-7784 (613) 254-9267  
tim@zingpr.com bziolo@certicom.com