Are patents too easy to acquire – or too hard? The UK is trying to find out, writes Nuala Moran

Helping UK universities turn their ideas into business has turned into a business of its own – with four IP management companies quoted on London’s Alternative Investment Market.

Acrobot Ltd., a spin-out from Imperial College London, is currently fund raising and is seeking partnerships and licence agreements.

Invest Northern Ireland has announced that Europe’s leading enterprise software company SAP AG, is to locate its first UK research centre in Belfast.

The climate for R&D-based start-ups in Central and Eastern Europe should be improving. But there’s still a way to go, writes Mary Lisbeth D’Amico.

The time is not right to breathe back life into the European software patent, says Francisco Mingorance from the Business Software Alliance. Thomas Lau investigates.

Overcoming the familiar barriers to public learning and understanding of science is focus of new research professorship established by the Hasselblad Foundation jointly at Chalmers University of Technology and Göteborg University in Göteborg, Sweden.

Multinationals have a new weapon in the innovation race: technology scouts. These people scan the globe looking for the next big thing.

Czechoslovakia’s development authorities are to win a reputation for the country as a magnet for emerging biotech.