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Who is the Greatest British Inventor |
THE TIMES today launches a search for the greatest invention this country has produced.
Over the next two weeks we will highlight 20 of the most significant British innovations of the past 250 years, and invite our readers to vote for the one they think most important to the making of the modern world.
The candidates have been selected by experts and curators from the National Museum of Science & Industry (NMSI) ﾗ which includes the Science Museum in London, the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Bradford and the National Railway Museum in York. Their visitors will also join the vote.
The first set of five inventions, from the field of medicine, appears today. Britainﾒs contribution to transport will be covered tomorrow. On Wednesday we will reveal the five inventions that did most to change the way we live, and Thursdayﾒs list will explore industry.
Voting is open until midnight on Thursday at the Great British Inventions section of the TimesOnline website, and we will publish the winners of each category on Saturday. These four, plus the runner-up with the most votes, will go forward to a final shortlist from which readers will choose the overall winner next week.
A panel of experts ﾗ including Anjana Ahuja, the Times science writer; Lindsay Sharp, director of the NMSI; Lord Waldegrave of North Hill, chairman of the NMSI and a former Science Minister; and Mandy Haberman, award-winning inventor of the Anywayup Cup ﾗ will deliver an independent verdict next week.
They will consider their decision in a public event at the Science Museum's Dana Centre on the evening of Wednesday, November 24. |
| Source: The Times |
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Ingenuity is vital to an economy reliant on innovation |
VELCRO, eat your heart out. Sellotape, enjoy your dotage. Last night a Manchester University researcher gave a talk in Cambridge on a material developed through nanotechnology that behaves like the skin on a gekkoﾒs foot. Drag it through sand, and it is still sticky enough to suspend a model Spiderman from the ceiling.
From such tricks, fortunes and even social revolutions grow. Gekko skinﾒs commercial applications may prove to be as mundane as Post-It notes or as miraculous as Spiderman himself. But applications there will be, and thanks to some belated but still vital government backing for nanotechnology research there is a reasonable chance that the benefits will accrue to Great Britain plc.
Britons, all modesty apart, are as ingenious a bunch as ever. From nanotech to biotech and vacuum cleaners to personal hovercraft, we have a collective itch to invent. The UK Patent Office received more than 20,000 British applications last year and granted more than 3,600, up 10 per cent on 2002. The US and Japan produce more patents, but their economies are larger and their specialisms (especially cars and electronics) are more patentable than ours (which include biotech and pharmaceuticals).
The minds behind these numbers, whether they work on corporate research campuses, in university labs or Glaswegian design studios, are heirs to a glorious tradition of British invention that The Times, in conjunction with the National Museum of Science and Industry, celebrates over the next two weeks. Todayﾒs inventors differ from many of their forbears in one important respect: with inevitable exceptions (that personal hovercraft may be one) they are demolishing the stereotype of the impoverished dreamer in his potting shed, and forcing investors to see them for what they are: brilliant and unpredictable, but worldly as to patent law and the whims of the market, and utterly essential in an economy dependent on innovation.
Consider Professor Alan Windle. His recent breakthrough in creating carbon nanotubes 5,000 times thinner than a human hair constituted a big step towards realising the sci-fi fantasy of space elevators that would lift payloads into orbit without a rocket engine; and towards the earthlier notion of a massive suspension bridge across the Straits of Gibraltar.
Or Ewan Birney, a bioinformatics pioneer whose Cambridge-based team has written algorithms that enable 1,000 computers working together to translate the human genome into data that geneticists can actually use. He likens the task to translating 100 telephone directoriesﾒ worth of Martian into English with no native speaker to help.
Further from scienceﾒs cutting edge, but closer to commercial viability, Kane Kramer has high hopes for his patent for a digital recording system designed to replace hundreds of tons of legal paperwork with instant audiofiles flitting between 21st-century phone exchanges and your email box.
A few more steps back, Mandy Harberman is taking orders for her AnywayUp Cup, the last word in infant spill prevention. She is also helping to judge The Timesﾒs challenge to name the greatest british invention, which looks back to such giants of industry as Bessemer and Hargreaves, but also hopes to focus attention on British inventorsﾒ renaissance.... |
| Source: The Times |
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Time to Take the Plunge |
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In mainland Europe, the benefit of an effective, affordable system of IP insurance has long been recognised. Perhaps the reason for the insurance industry's lack of support for IPR insurance results from the difficulty in calculating the insurance risk as applied to patents. |
| Source: Patent World |
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In the right hands - can insurers protect companies' ideas? |
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The Danish Proposal argues for a Eupean insurance policy managed by a European Agency as an equaliser and the need for an initial pump-priming subsidy, partly to establish an expectation of litigation in response to infringement...Haberman notes that this type of scheme would require considerably support from the insurance industry, support that has so far only been offered in limited areas. One of the main impediments is the cost of litigation. |
| Source: Insider Quarterly |
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A patent system that can be the mother of all inventions |
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Mr Grant (Wragge & Co) advocaes insurance against legal costs as the way forward for poor patentees. But this solution is in turn dismissed by Mandy Haberman, investor of the Anywayup cup.."The insurance products are few and far between and expensive. Premiums could easily be ﾣ50000 a year, which a start-up could not afford," she says. |
| Source: Financial Times |
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It's a Steal |
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"IP is a currency business so it's essential to really understand it, (says Mandy Haberman). "Innovation protected by IP is where commercial value lies. But there is no point having patents unless you can afford to enforce them - insurance is a must-have against infringement." |
| Source: Director magazine |
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Valuing & Protecting Intellectual Property |
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At Dr Ruth Taplin's book launch held at the Old Lloyd's Library, Mandy Haberman, inventor of the revolutionary Anywayup Cup (R) outlined some of the lessons learned when she took a multi-national baby products manufacturer to court for illegally copying her invention. She explained: "Patent rights are of little value unless they can be enforced, but patent litigation is prohibitively expensive for small companies and private inventors, particularly in the UK and the USA. Conseuqnelty, companies with deep pockets assume they run little risk if they infringe IP rights. In most cases they are right; patent insurance can help, but those who need it most are often those who can least afford the premiums." |
| Source: The Independent Broker |
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Poppy: Oliver's Fun Day in the Park |
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You can always bank on the Brits to hit the great outdoors...and celebs are no exception. Jools Oliver took her incredibly cute daughters Poppy and Daily Boo to a north London part to catch some rays during the recent mini heatwave. It's thirsty work running round in the sunshine. "These no spill cups are brilliant." |
| Source: Heat magazine |
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SMEs Wary of High Costs of Patents |
Many companies have failed to take precautions and have ended up paying the price, writes Bob Sherwood.
This article discusses why SMEs fail to properly protect their IPR and why those that do experience problems.
Mandy Haberman's case illustrates the point. (extract) "If an inventor, against all odds, achieves commercial success, then you can be absolutely sure that the invention will be copied" she says. "It is not uncommon for combined costs in similar litigations to amount to between ﾣ750,000 and ﾣ1m. My insurance cover was woefully inadequate, enough to pay for the first few meetings with a solicitor and a cup of tea.....The premiums for meaningful cover are too high, frequently beyond the reach of most private inventors and SMEs. It is a vicious circle: if there were a much greater number of policy holders, there would be less risk for the insurance providers and so premiums would come down". |
| Source: Financial Times |
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Hopes of a patent breakthrough by Bob Sherwood and Nikki Tait |
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'Changes in the patent and trademark regulations have been coming thick and fast' but the recent patent bill has had a mixed reception. Mandy Haberman believes 'In areas where the new bill really could have made a difference, it has been lily- livered'. |
| Source: Financial Times, Features Law & Business. |
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