SMEs are crucial to Europe. They are the basis of Europe's competitiveness and job creation. SMEs represent 99% of all EU enterprises and they contribute to 65% of GDP in the European Union. To survive and grow, SMEs must constantly innovate and accommodate advances in new technology. The Sixth Framework programme (FP6) helps SMEs to achieve these goals. FP6 includes over €2. 2 billion for SME participation, making it one of the world's largest financial instruments supporting research and innovation for small and medium-sized firms...
Both the experience which ARMINES has gained from over 15 years strong involvement in European programmes and an industry relationship developed over a long period of time (in 2002, 50% of business came from industrial research contracts), have enabled it to prepare for the FP6 principle of "autonomy of the consortium"...
With the new Framework Programme, the European Union has established clear and ambitious objectives regarding the impact of research and innovation on the smallest enterprises. The most important sign is the 1800 million euros (15% of the budget of the seven thematic priority areas) destined for SMEs, with the aim of stimulating, in particular, their...
The International Network for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises - INSME - is a non profit Association, open to international membership, aimed at fostering transnational cooperation and public and private partnership in the field of innovation and technology transfer (TT) to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). ...
Participants in FP6 funded projects will create a significant quantity of subject matter protected by different Intellectual Property rights. The question as to how to negotiate the division of profits and how to manage jointly held rights may not necessarily be of prime importance during the earlier phases of negotiations. However, ignorance to these...
Regulation (EC) No 422/2004, amending Regulation (EC) No 40/94 on the Community trade mark (hereafter referred to as the "CTM"), was published in issue L 70 of the Official Journal of the European Union on 7 March 2004. The new Regulation is the result of a consultation procedure, which started back in December 2002 with the European Commission's Proposal...
The ball-point pen: another great small invention. Although some would trace the origin of the ball-point pen back to the work of Galileo in the XVII century, the most reliable documented precedent can be found in the XIX century, in a product used to mark leather. Nonetheless, it wasn't until 1938, that the first patent for the modern ball-point pen...
The esp@cenet quiz is an exercise proposed to our readers. Its aim is to show that patent searching can be an exciting quest, yielding relevant results in almost all technical fields...
