Copyright © Françoise Herrmann
Ladies and Gentlemen… tonight is the 87th Academy
Awards for cinematographic achievement, a night honoring the stars of cinema…
the OSCARS, held each year in Los Angeles, since 1929! (Circa the
invention of crepe rubber soles….)
Now, please scroll forward…
On June 11, 2015, the EPO Inventor Awards will be held in
Paris this year. This event is the "OSCARS" of invention awards. The European
Patent Organization Inventor Awards, since 2006, is even an event that is in many
ways mapped onto tonight’s OSCAR celebrations.
Inventors are nominated in five major categories: Research,
Industry, SME – Small to Medium-sized Enterprises, Life-time achievement and
non-European countries. The public (you
and I) have an opportunity both nominate inventors, and to vote and select a
sixth, popular inventor award.
However, unlike the gold-plated OSCAR statuette of the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards, depicting an art-deco knight
standing on reels of film, with five spokes symbolizing the five original
branches of cinematic achievement for: actors, directors, producers, writers and
technicians, the EPO Inventor Awards’ trophy is a beautifully crafted sail (perhaps further powered by an English pun...).
To highlight the changing
face of innovation, each year, the EPO Awards trophy is produced out of a
different quintessential industrial material, in the country where the awards
are held. For example, last year’s trophy was crafted from German porcelain, by
the Royal Factory of Porcelain in Berlin. And this year in Paris the trophy will
be produced with a different material – yet to be announced.
Images of the EPO Awards sail trophy and the Academy Awards Oscar are included above. And below, a short Youtube video explaining the crafting of the
sail in 2011, when the EPO Inventor Awards were held in Budapest, Hungary.
Indeed, in 2011, the trophy was crafted out of liquid
wood or arboform, a biodegradable bioplastic that uses a wood byproduct called
lignin, in combination with resins and other fibers to make plastic.
Stay tuned to participate and vote for the 2015 EPO inventor
awards, and to discover all the 2015 EPO inventor nominations. These are
usually some of the greatest inventions that have changed the hum of daily life,
industrial life, medicine etc…
And, yes… in the interim, we will also spend a lot of time
highlighting the controversial aspects of the patenting system. Indeed this
system is deeply layered, and no examination of the patenting system is ever complete
without understanding the controversies, or listening to the voices of dissent.
References
EPO – About the award
European Award Trophy 2011
European Inventor Award 2014 Trophy
http://youtu.be/YvYFpUjVCSg
No comments:
Post a Comment