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

134,073: the number of patents filed for via the Patent Cooperation Treaty in 2005, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization – a rise of 9.4 per cent over 2004.

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.

It is one thing to recognise the need to manage intellectual property like any other strategic resource. But it is quite another to install the systems and devise the processes for doing it.

The Scotsman reports on a life sciences industry meeting in Edinburgh, and sparks off some thoughts about Qinetiq.

Last month the world's leading pharmaceutical company received simultaneous FDA approval for two new therapies. Yet neither drug was invented by the company. Both were originally developed by small biotechs.

With high oil prices showing no sign of quitting, "cleantech" is the new darling VC investment sector. But, asks Mary Lisbeth D'Amico, is the market more froth than substance?

Not so much a geological specimen as something that will make nanotechnology happen, dendrimers are the young upstarts of the polymer family - but they have promise.

Nanotechnology has the power to transform healthcare. But Europe will lose out to the United States unless it can mount a coherent approach to developing nanomedicine, says a new report.