CalAmp Corp.’s recent $3 million sale of patents for systems used by repo men to find cars may be more exciting than it looks.

The Oxnard company, which specializes in wireless communication hardware and software, sold technology that helps finance companies find cars that were bought with riskier loans and need to be repossessed. The buyer was ProconGPS Inc., a Knoxville, Tenn., company that tracks and recovers vehicles for dealers and lenders. ProconGPS is the world’s largest vehicle tracking company for subprime car loans.

“It’s nice monetization of intellectual property,” said Mike Crawford, an analyst at B. Riley & Co. in West Los Angeles. “The company could have more potential hidden value in the pipeline given its continued focus on developing and protecting its intellectual property.”

Plus, CalAmp retains rights to use the technology itself, which connects GPS, cellular networks and information systems that monitor loans and the cars that were financed.

The money from the sale will boost the company’s revenue.

“Substantially all those proceeds will be reflected on the bottom line,” said Rick Vitelle, chief financial officer of CalAmp.

The sale was CalAmp’s third patent transaction in the past few years. The previous sales brought in $1.5 million and $500,000. Vitelle said that the company is open to selling more patents while retaining rights to use the technology.

The latest patent sale comes amid significant growth in CalAmp’s wireless data technology business, which it sells to utilities, government agencies and corporate customers. The data technology division is one of the company’s two business segments. The other is its satellite division, which provides technology and equipment for North American broadcasters.

Thanks to higher demand in a section of its wireless data business called Mobile Resource Management, which includes the car recovery technology, the company’s wireless data revenue increased 39 percent in the first quarter of fiscal 2012 from the prior year.

CalAmp’s wireless technology growth has been fueled by demand for products and services from companies specializing in fleet management, vehicle finance, asset tracking and stolen vehicle recovery.

The technology also may find wider use. CalAmp is testing technology that can be used by auto insurers to monitor customers’ driving habits. By using data from CalAmp equipment installed in cars, insurers can manage risk and lower rates for good drivers.

“The wireless technology adoption trends are extraordinarily favorable to CalAmp,” Michael Burdiek, the company’s chief executive officer, said in a conference call when earnings were announced last month. “The prospects for the company are very bright.”