In the News

UK's Youngest Patent Holder

An "Improved Broom," conceived to help his dad with work in the garden, has made five year old Sam Houghton the UK's youngest patent holder. The young inventor - only three years old at the time - had the idea while watching his father raking up leaves with one broom then switching to another for smaller debris. Sam suggested tying the two brooms together with a large rubber band. Sam's father - who happens to be a patent attorney - figured that Sam's double-broom idea was sufficiently new, useful and inventive to be patentable. He filed a patent application with the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) - now granted.

Sam said: "I saw my daddy brushing up and made it. There are two brushes because one gets the big bits and one gets the little bits left behind. I don't know if I want to be an inventor when I grow up but this was fun."

Sam is a fan of Wallace & Gromit, the accident-prone inventor and his canine side-kick who star in the animated films by Nick Park, and whom the UK IPO have adopted as mascots for their Cracking Ideas campaign (see www.crackingideas.com). "Characters like Wallace & Gromit can really inspire children to innovate," said Sally Long, the Cracking Ideas project manager. "Sam has shown what a young mind can come up with. Patent applications do not always record ages but we have never come across anyone as young as Sam who has been successful in their application and believe he is the youngest yet."

Source UK Intellectual Property Office

Public Health, Innovation and IP - New WHO Resolution

The 61st World Health Assembly (WHA) which was held in Geneva from May 19 to 24 adopted a Resolution on a Global strategy and Plan of action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property. The Strategy aims at promoting new approaches to pharmaceutical research and development (R&D) and to enhance access to medicines, particularly for diseases that disproportionately affect developing countries.

The WHA resolution is the result of a process that started in May 2003 with the establishment by the World Health Organization (WHO) of a Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation and Public Health (CIPIH). Following the report by that Commission, the WHO, in 2006, set up an Intergovernmental...