Great support from our neighbors at the Alpbach Technology Forum: the Austrian Patent Office

Already last year the Austrian Patent Office and TU Austria’s Innovation-Marathon were neighbors at the Alpbach Technology Forum. What a fabulous coincidence! The Austrian Patent Office is the expert for research and is supporting our teams when it comes to different questions: has anybody else dealt with a similar question before? How have others solved tasks like ours?

Source: Österreichisches Patentamt/APA-Fotoservice/Lackner

One of the teams reports: ‘Our task is to find a solution for a door-less fridge in retail. The Austrian patent office could show us three examples how others solved a similar challenge. One from Japan, one from China and another from the US – we would not have been able to find these examples so fast. ’ What was also striking for the students was that the examples included technologies they would not have come up with themselves, for instance air curtains as a substitute for fridge doors.

When asking Stefan Harasek and Burkhard Schlechter (pic) from the Patent Office why they like to support students they answer: ‘It’s a great way to raise awareness for intellectual property issues. Something that really matters to us.’