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This week the European Investment Fund took the first step in its ambitious new plan to unleash a wave of technology transfer across Europe. In doing so it endorsed a model pioneered in the UK.

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.

French researchers have developed a cell therapy that could slash the risk of rejection after bone marrow grafts to under 5 per cent, and are looking for first-round funding.

The European Investment Fund has partnered with UK technology commercialisation company IP Group to form a venture capital fund to invest in university spin-outs.

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.

Germany's academic spin-outs are not such a force for developing the economy after all, according to an in depth study of 20 of their number.

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.

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.

Technology transfer is a sensitive and complex process. Changing one factor won’t provide the magic bullet, says Anna S. Nilsson, Science and Technology Attaché at the Swedish Embassy in Washington DC.

Swedish spin-out Denator Biotechnology is raising money to fund development of its technology that analyses protein samples without adulterating them with added reagents.

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

The claim that European public opinion contributes to the technology gap between the US and Europe is invalid, according to the latest Eurobarometer survey.

It's better to have fewer, stronger, spin-offs than shoals of tiddlers, as Marina Murphy discovers.

Researchers at Northumbria University, UK, have a developed a safe, cheap clinical waste disposal system suitable for hospitals in developing countries, and are looking for backing from investors to take the idea forward.

Antenova of Cambridge, UK, a developer of smart antenna for accessing mobile location-based services, said is targeting a flotation on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange in 2007.

Mista Ltd is looking for funding and publishers for its software, which allows users to create virtual guided tours.

Battery capacity has been blamed for holding back innovation in many fields, from renewable energy to mobiles. Now nanotech is providing the answer.

The Cambridge-MIT Institute has spun out its Communications Research Network project as a company to step up the pace of innovation in communications.