Technology transfer

Top materials scientist Eicke Weber has been lured back to Germany from the US after 23 years, to take over at the helm of the Fraunhofer’s Institute of Solar Energy.

Nanotechnology looks like generating more paper than profits as yet another policy review gets under way.

For the last three years, the French parliament has been struggling with legislation on copyright and associated rights in information society. It has surfaced in the headlines, portrayed as a fight to force Apple to make its iTunes music downloads playable on competing music boxes. But there's more involved.

A key distinction between physical and intellectual property is that the value of the latter is created as much by sharing it as by owning it. How to share it, between creator and enabler, is a particularly acute issue within the academic environment - as indicated by a recent, noteworthy debate on the subject in Sweden.

Orla Protein Technologies, a spin-out from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, is looking to raise £3 million in a series A funding round for the next stage of its development.

The Health Research Board of Ireland is to join the consortium of UK research funders developing a single gateway to the largest pool of patients in the world.

TeGenero, the company behind the drug trial fiasco that put six healthy volunteers into intensive care, has announced it is filing for insolvency.

Israel’s high-tech incubator companies are joining the stock market – and perhaps providing a new model for technology commercialisation

German company Q-Cells AG has taken a stake in Swiss university spin-off VHF Technologies, which makes flexible plastic films for solar panels.

Innovation will be a priority for the EU over the next six months