First Innovation Fair Hosted At WTO, Draws Diverse Projects With IP In Mind

The World Trade Organization hosted an Innovation Fair on 28 October, gathering inventors, supporting agencies, and patent offices. A number of inventions were displayed and explained, from concrete walls to motorisation for bicycles.

 

Patents, trademarks, designs and trade secrets have been commonly used by inventors at the fair, most of which were from developed countries.

This Innovation Fair is the first of its kind held at WTO. It is sponsored by the United States, the European Union, Switzerland and Mexico, with support from many other WTO members, according to the US mission.

The fair is being held in parallel with the WTO Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), being held on 28-29 October (IPW, WTO/TRIPS, 22 October 2014). At the TRIPS Council, the EU, Switzerland and US have proposed a discussion on “intellectual property and innovation: promoting awareness; case studies.”

The event was open to the public and hosted several inventors, as well as the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the European Patent Office and the World Intellectual Property Organization presenting its initiatives WIPO Re:Search and WIPO Green.

Among the inventors was an Italian company called Columbus, which develops superconductors. Columbus produces superconducting wires, which will be used by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the company representative told Intellectual Property Watch. Columbus also partners in a number of EU and US projects.

The Agency for Science, Innovation and Technology of Lithuania also attended the fair and presented two projects that have been funded by the agency. The agency helps students, researchers and entrepreneurs to go “from lab to market,” a representative for the agency told Intellectual Property Watch.

The two innovations presented by the Lithuanian agency were the “UFO” bottle, which is a collapsible, reusable and recyclable plastic bottle, and “Rubbee,” a friction drive module for bicycles “to turn a regular bike into an electrical one,” said the representative. The Rubbee has applied for a registered Community design delivered by the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM), and has deposited an application to the WIPO-managed Patent Cooperation Treaty. The UFO bottle’s inventors have applied for a EU patent and a registered Community design as well.

Also present at the fair was the “Eco-Sandwich,” a recycled concrete sandwich facade panel. Prefabricated panels are produced and then transported to the site of construction. This is a project that has been supported by the Faculty of Civil Engineering, University of Zagreb, Croatia, and funded by the European Commission. According to a representative of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, the name of the product has been trademarked and the trademark belongs to the company manufacturing the product.

Some inventions presented in the fair have not been commercialised yet, such as an interactive graphical tactile display tablet-like device for visually impaired people. The invention, called “TACMON2,” is being developed by a Hungarian company, Ateknea Solutions, and TACMON2 is also co-funded by the European Commission. According to a representative of Ateknea Solutions, the project is still ongoing and only a prototype product is available. The final products are not likely to hit shelves for several years due to technical constraints, but the technology will be available next year. A patent on the concept was applied for in Hungary in 2011 and an application was put to the Patent Cooperation Treaty in 2013, the representative told Intellectual Property Watch. However, the know-how on the technology remains a trade secret, he said.

Also patented is a new system to allow easy glide of curtains on rods. According to the French inventor, the Reo system will be commercialised in 2015 and is patented in several countries, including China, the European Union countries, and the United States.

A social media monitoring platform sponsored by Innoventures, an Egyptian innovation platform supporting start-ups, was also present at the Innovation Fair. The aim of the start-up is to gather data from the social web to analyse it. This could be used for commercial use, or for measuring the impact of campaigns, the start-up representative told Intellectual Property Watch. The monitoring platform is solely intended to use public data that are posted on social media, the representative confirmed.

Innoventures provides a six-month incubating programme to start-ups, and offers a session on intellectual property options to protect inventions, an Innoventures representative said.

Separately, on 29 October, a side event to the TRIPS Council will be held on “The Innovation Lifecycle: From Idea to Commercialization,” convened by the US, EU, Switzerland and Lithuania, in cooperation with the Global Innovation Forum.

Image Credits: Catherine Saez