SciBlogs

Software Patents: the Difference between Excluding Computer Programs as Such and Excluding Computer Programs as Such Peter Kerr May 23

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By guest blogger Doug Calhoun

The Patents Bill has had a tortuous ride through Parliament – to say the least. Introduced in 2008, it was reviewed by a select committee in 2009 and reported back in March 2010. In September 2012, the bill finally got its second reading that featured a heated debate over the exclusion from patent eligibility of “a computer program as such”.

Since then the committee stage (when the “as such” wording would be voted on) has been delayed.

On 9 May the government tabled Supplementary Order Paper 237.

The main change proposed in SOP 237 was to rewrite the September 2012 exclusion in a new Clause 10A. The new clause features 4 sub-clauses that seek to explain how the exclusion is to be interpreted – but the substantive exclusion is still “a computer program as such.”

So it came as a bit of a surprise to read Clare Curran’s description of the change as David conquering Goliath – a win for the 90%+ of New Zealand innovators that she claims to represent. It is a bit difficult to fathom how the exclusion of a computer program “as such” can be condemned so strongly in September and then be a triumph the following May.

But hey, this is politics. And Clare Curran has borrowed a page from the George W. Bush manual of political spin. She didn’t have a bomber jacket, a “Mission Accomplished” banner or an aircraft carrier. So she had to settle for a declaration of victory – never mind the inconvenient details – on her party’s “Red Alert” blog.

Ms Curran’s victory announcement included this slight revision of history:

“Three years ago, the Commerce Select Committee undertook a much needed review of New Zealand’s patent laws which hadn’t been looked at since 1953. A substantial review which considered and recommended modernisation to an important plank of our intellectual property regime ranging from inventions to medicines, traditional knowledge and indigenous plants and animals to software programs.”

The Patents Act 1953 has been under review for half of its life. In 1983 a government appointed committee (the Industrial Property Advisory Committee) began the process. Since then reviews have done by the Law Commission (1989/90), the Ministry of Commerce (1990-1994), and the Ministry of Economic Development (2000-2008). The Patents Bill, in its original form was introduced by a Labour led government in 2008. What happened before Clare Curran became aware of it was seemingly beyond her event horizon.

The policy development had been conducted in a largely non-partisan way through to September 2012, when computer software became a political football and the rest of the Patents Bill and its purpose became largely ignored. The injection of partisan politics into patent policy at this stage is hardly a recipe for success for New Zealand.

According to its explanatory note, the wording of SOP 237 is intended to be

“more consistent with English precedent.”

But one wonders how closely the authors of the change have looked at English precedent.

In the most recent (3 May 2013) UK appeal decision HTC Europe v Apple the English court of Appeal reversed a lower court decision and held an Apple patent claim to be valid. The invention related to the organisation of touch screen devices. The claim reads:

  • “(i) A method for handling touch events at a multi-touch device, comprising:
  • (ii) displaying one or more views;
  • (iii) executing one or more software elements, each software element being associated with a particular view;
  • (iv) associating a multi-touch flag or an exclusive touch flag with each view, said multi-touch flag indicating whether a particular view is allowed to receive multiple simultaneous touches and said exclusive touch flag indicating whether a particular view allows other views to receive touch events while the particular view is receiving a touch event;
  • (v) receiving one or more touches at the one or more views; and
  • (vi) selectively sending one or more touch events, each touch event describing a received touch, to one or more of the software elements associated with one or more views at which a touch was received based on the values of the multi-touch and exclusive touch flags.”

The lower court decision was that this claimed an (ineligible) computer program as such – the appeal court held it did not. The invention claimed was patent eligible.

Lord Justice Lewison, in paragraphs 140 to 144, had a bit of a moan:

“This appeal requires us, once again, to venture into the minefield of the exclusion from patentability of computer programs ‘as such’”

He then went on to explain that the two simple words “as such” found in the European Patent Convention (which governs both UK domestic law and the law applied in the European Patent Office) still have no clear meaning after 35 years of trying. Instead of arguing about what the legislation means, the arguments now are about what the gloss means. And still no one can agree.

SOP 237 sets out to put into law in New Zealand, a New Zealand “gloss” on the gloss that they have been disagreeing about in the English courts and the European Patent Office since 1978.

Clare Curran paints

“the bloated patent attorney sector”

as one of the villains on the side of Goliath in this saga. (Gratuitous insults seem to be as common to political blogs as a bit of biffo is to rugby pitches.)

What her “triumph” has unwittingly done is to open up a fertile new field for the bloated patent attorney sector to venture into over the next few years. And among the most likely innovations will be in defining software-implemented inventions.

Clare Curran might also want to have a look in her own (Dunedin) back yard. A successful University of Otago spinoff company there is Pacific Edge. That company boasts on its website that it underpins its products with a strong portfolio of patents.

One of its New Zealand patents, NZ 544432, claims a method for determining the prognosis of colorectal cancer in a patient using analysis software.

Under the new clause 10A and under clause 15 of the Patents Bill such claims might no longer be eligible for patents because they might claim a computer program per se or else because they might claim a method of diagnosis, or both.

The most valuable asset that Pacific Edge has is its intellectual property. The Patents Bill casts doubt on the patent eligibility of innovative technologies that Pacific Edge is seeking to commercialise.

Is this really going to promote investment in innovation?




Lightning Lab startups ask – ‘where’s the money’? Peter Kerr May 21

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Lightning Lab 2013 saw nine startups pitch their digital products to would-be investors last week, seeking expansion capital for ideas that 12 weeks before mostly existed on paper.

The Wellington Demo Day saw highly polished presentations, with clear development plans and just as clear ‘here’s how we and our investors are going to make money’ to about 300 people at Te Papa’s Soundings Theatre. About half the audience were financiers.

Any investment secured goes to the next stage of development and expansion into global markets.

My initial underlying thought was jealousy.

Why? Because the participants have obviously learned so much.

Tui Te Hau, CEO of Wellington startup incubator Creative HQ up summed this rationale better than I can.

“Lightning Lab is turning out 30 entrepreneurs with a harder edge and keener and smarter drive to succeed than many. How far they go is up to them, but these companies are 12 weeks old and they already have more scars than most get in several years.”

These nine companies were whittled from 87 applications to LL late last year, and each received $6000 per head from a set of founding investors. By being part of a three month intensive acceleration programme, their digital concepts have been validated, built and established with early customers.

The startups have been mentored by local and international advisers, faced hard deadlines in growth targets and a structured model for accelerating early stage business growth based on international best practice.

When Te Hau talks about scars, she’s not exaggerating – but obtaining them so quickly and with the ability to ask advice such as “what should we do now” in such a concentrated manner – is something so valuable it really can’t be priced.

What is patently clear is that the 30 participants, and their wider networks, have had such an injection of entrepreneurial spirit and possibilities that multiplier spinoffs and benefits can only result for Wellington and New Zealand.

Put another way; this programme, with its hand-holding, arse-kicking and question-asking intensiveness will create a virtuous circle of increasing wealth.

And sure, like all of us, these startups have, and will make mistakes.

But, they know what needs to be done to get back on track, or alternatively how to fail-fast (and then get on with another project).

Because the Demo Day was asking for money, what can be reported publicly is limited.

Suffice to say that (and you’d have to imagine that the mentoring has been also strong in this area) the investment dollars being asked for by the startups seemed reasonable and appropriate.

Many of the companies had potential exponential growth rates, but realism ruled.

It is now up to the individual companies themselves to reveal if or what investment(s) have been made in them – and as this becomes known Lightning Lab will have its own raison d’etre validated.

For the record, those presenting were:

LearnKo – delivers online learning programs to English language organisations in Asia, harnessing Australasian tutors, training them and providing them with content to deliver through an online classroom

Publons – platform for crowd-sourced peer-review of academic articles, where academics build a reputation for their contributions. An alternative to the extremely slow, expensive and closed status quo of the past 300 years of academic publishing

Adeez – specialist mobile marketing platform, enabling brands and their agencies to increase their ROI on mobile marketing

Expander – tracking and analytics platform that protects brands by providing them with powerful tools to combat counterfeit, while connecting manufacturers and consumers

teamisto – turn a typical business sponsorship donation to an amateur sports club or team into an effective advertising channel with measurable results

Questo – works with organisations by providing a platform to create activities with incentives and rewards to engage their visitors. A mobile app and analytics engine provides the ability to track, measure and evaluate their visitors’ behaviour

promoki – social media platform that gamifies photo and video contests. Help brands co-create advertising campaigns with their audience and distribute crowd-filled media across multiple social networks

Kidsgomobile – software device to help parents teach their children to become responsible users of their first smartphone. Tool that notifies parents if their child engages in potentially risky phone behaviour and helps them resolve these issues

WIP – platform that enables professional video makers to share their work-in-progress videos with their team and clients to gather precise and meaningful feedback

Without doubt, some of these startups will go on to become much larger businesses. Without doubt too, most of them would not have got to this ‘go’ position without Lightning Lab.

The learning has been immense, and a thumbs up to those investors and sponsors who put their hands in their pockets from the get-go to kick the whole thing off.

Applications for the next Lightning Lab 2014 will open in September this year.




One way to crack a coder shortage Peter Kerr May 17

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Ever tried to get hold of a professional who can write computer code?

Such is the shortage, that a recent would-be returning ex-pat Kiwi, who knew how to program, put out a general inquiry through WellRailed if anyone in Wellington or wider NZ would be interested in meeting once he got here.

Apparently he immediately had 26 replies, and half a dozen offers of employment, sight unseen, with no interview whatsoever.

So; it would seem there’s a definite shortage of people who understand and can manipulate the workings of computers, mobile devices and apps.

It is this developer (another name for coder and programmer) shortage that’s driven Enspiral (a digital collective cum incubator cum clever people autonomously working together) to offer a type of ‘coding for dummies’ course, specifically around Ruby programming. (sticK’s had a couple of stories on Enspiral’s different type of business model before; see here and here.)

It is called Code Yoga, and its intent is to expose people who have never coded before to what it is about, and, reasonably quickly, help them get a level where could be employed at a junior coding level. From there – well, the world’s your oyster if that’s your bent.

This is very much an Enspiral kinda thing to do.

The collective’s co-creator, Joshua Vial, and the rest of its current eco-system of 105 people based mainly in Wellington but linked to Hong Kong, Berlin, New York and Phnom Penh, share a philosophy of helping people to help themselves.

It is part of the social enterprise model that drives most of the 12 companies that reside (the wrong word but it will have to do) under its umbrella.

Enspiral itself is programmer short-handed at times, so at the very least it is feeding its own needs.

But, in identifying a patently obvious shortage, and doing something about it in a ‘just do it, just learn it’ manner, Enspiral’s demonstrating an attitude that’s bigger than itself.

According to Vial, many of the dozen or so people who have done the course since it kicked off in recently (advertised through the interesting ‘teaching/learning’ platform Chalkle), have graduated to real, paying jobs in IT.

These include writers, teachers, other types of professionals, as well as students.

As a crash course compared to university or polytech based one to three year courses, it is obviously quite different.

However, as a way of introducing newbies to the hidden world of code, and whether it is a gig they’d like to have a go at for a while, these Enspiral guys deserve some credit.

Heck, some of them might even enjoy it as a challenge!

P.S. Enspiral’s kicking off a dev boot camp in the next month or two too – keep an eye out if you’d like to be part of t




National Science Challenge winners underwhelm Peter Kerr May 14

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There’s only one word really to describe the winners of the National Science Challenge – ‘wow’ writ small.

Or, perhaps it is just me that is completely underwhelmed by the announcement of 10 research areas that can comfortably be binned as business as usual.

Though, pity the team tasked with coming up with an overview of the NSC considering there were only 200 entries from greater New Zealand on where and what we should research.

Right from the get-go the challenge lacked direction, had a sort of what is it all about non-rationale.

As chairman of the NSC, the prime minister’s chief science adviser Sir Peter Gluckman is obliged to put a positive spin on the challenge.

As he commented recently:

“The intent is to invigorate the science system, allowing it to become more collaborative and strategic in its approach.”

As the Tui billboards say,

‘Yeh, right’

But firstly, a reminder of the challenges selected.

  • Aging well – harnessing science to sustain health and wellbeing into the later years of life
  • A better start – improving the potential of young New Zealanders to have a healthy and successful life
  • Healthier lives – research to reduce the burden of major New Zealand health problems
  • High value nutrition – developing high value foods with validated health benefits
  • New Zealand’s biological heritage – protecting and managing our biodiversity, improving our biosecurity, and enhancing our resilience to harmful organisms
  • Our land and water – Research to enhance primary sector production and productivity while maintaining and improving our land and water quality for future generations
  • Life in a changing ocean – understanding how we can exploit our marine resources within environmental and biological constraints
  • The deep south – understanding the role of the Antarctic and the Southern Ocean in determining our climate and our future environment
  • Science for technological innovation – enhancing the capacity of New Zealand to use physical and engineering sciences for economic growth
  • Resilience to nature’s challenges – research into enhancing our resilience to natural disasters

They’re all worthy, but.

The trouble is, they’re just another ad-hoc add-on to a science and innovation system that has no clear idea of what we, NZ Inc, are trying to do, or of what particular piece(s) of a very large pie we should/could concentrate on.

At the same time (and I appreciate this is dirty-type talk) – these challenges don’t address where and how are we going to make more money for our country by clever use of R&D, and taking such new products and services to market?

There’s no connectedness between science and the economic health of our country. It means there a lack of relationships and countrywide partnering linking everything.

The NSC will achieve nothing. The public will have no more engagement with science, business is none the wiser, scientists will simply keep on keeping on.

Amongst comment, from my point of view, the best came from Prof Shaun Hendy – who was courageous enough to call a whole lot of nothing exactly that. Shaun’s a professor at Victoria University’s School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, as well as deputy director of the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. He also a regular answer-provider on National Radio’s evening show. Original story is here.

“Of the 10 science challenges selected, only one really addresses one of the key economic challenges our country faces: namely the over-dependence of our economy on the primary sector,” he said.

“Our government invests far less in physical sciences and engineering than those of other small advanced economies, leaving our economy perilously exposed to volatile commodity markets.”

Having one of the challenges “simply aimed at making better use of physical science and engineering research is disappointing, given that we have just created a new organisation, Callaghan Innovation, to do exactly this”, Prof Hendy said.

Exactly.

We have MBIE, Callaghan Innovation, the Marsden Fund, these challenges – but no clear idea of what we’re doing.

Certainly is business as usual.




Email sales tool allows companies to ‘dress to impress’ Peter Kerr May 07

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On the face of it, creating clever emails with embedded graphics and other gee-whizz stuff that acts as a smart sales tool should be pretty easy.

But (apparently), there’s only three companies around the world have pulled off the feat – including Auckland-based LiveLink Connect.

The three-year old six-person entity (you can hardly call it a start-up now), was incubated through The Icehouse and has had two angel funding rounds for a total of about $450,000 invested.

Its founder and managing director Jason Roberts (disclaimer….an old mate of mine) had been in sales and marketing roles for a number of years and more often than not found email a terrible sales tool.

“It was hard to share information between distributors, retailers and customers, and, if as a salesman you sent an email, you had no idea if it was opened,” says Roberts.

“As a salesman, you want to ensure your email dresses to impress and ensure the ability to perfectly time your follow up call, so that was one of the things we set out to do.”

Roberts et al have created what they call ‘everything email’, which as well as being robust technology is also able to work with other email products LLC has on a collegial basis.

For example, company logos are rendered properly no matter what type of device the email is read on (and estimates now are that 50% are done so on a mobile device), whether it has been opened, or even if a disclosure document has been read.

The latter ability is especially important for those selling financial services such as insurance or broking other products – and having an electronic proof of a disclosure having been opened is becoming an increasingly important sales tool for LLC.

“What we’ve created, and continually improving is technologically complex, though, being cloud-based means it has to be simple, easy, secure and cheap,” he says.

“The information and data we can provide back to our clients about what actions have occurred as a result of the email makes its an invaluable marketing and sales tool – exactly what we set out to achieve.”

Roberts says LLC’s next major development is a sophisticated and integrated ‘statement stopper’. That is, to halt the sending of letter-based bills such as electricity, and instead has them sent by email.

LLC’s tracking ability indicates whether a customer hasn’t opened a company’s email, and a paper statement can then be automatically sent by snail-mail.

At that stage, Roberts expects to feature on the radar of a larger company looking to expand its offering, “so in five years or less we’re definitely looking to be acquired.”

Given that LLC is export-expanding, and is now trialing its technology with CMC, a division of giant Indian company Tata, that five year window may be short.

Not too bad for a sales tool that seems a sitter but obviously is a difficult one to pull off.




Problemsourcing initiative gets the academic once-over Peter Kerr Apr 24

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Open innovation and crowdsourcing are two relatively recent ways of finding solutions to (often) technical challenges experienced by companies.

There’s particular issues which need resolving when using the power of the crowd; along with the hope that someone has a usable answer.

Victoria (University) Business School in Wellington has, in the academic way that adheres to such publications’ rules, identified many of the pros and cons of open innovation and crowd sourcing in a hot-off-the-press paper recently published in ‘Technology Innovation Management Review’, see here.

Sally Davenport, Stephen Cummings, Urs Daellenbach and Charles Campbell have turned open innovation and crowd sourcing on its head with their paper and exploration; ‘Problemsourcing: Local Open Innovation for R&D Organizations’.

They’ve coined the term ‘problemsourcing’ – and given the rigour with which peer review is maintained – you have to presume they’re first.

“Problemsourcing is akin to crowdsourcing in reverse in that the open call initiator, not the crowd, holds the problem-solving capabilities, and the crowd-members offer not solutions but promising problems that would create substantial value if solved.”

The paper uses (the late) Industrial Research Ltd’s 2009 initiative ‘What’s Your Problem New Zealand’ as the model around which its authors explore problemsolving as a new open innovation practice – and in particular how the WYPNZ? competition for $1 million of research spending addresses eight key issues.
• Project delays
• Solution quality
• Ambiguous liability
• Temporary relationship
• Professional challenge
• Identity clash
• Exploitation and reputation effects
• Losers disenfranchised

The writers conclude that the success of WYPNZ? at this stage is measured primarily by the range of high-quality problems that were proposed as well as the sheer number of companies (in a small country) that, by submitting problems, indicated an interest in participating in such a process.

They point out: “With crowdsourcing, innovative activity is distributed somewhere in the crowd, but with problemsourcing, it remains firmly within the boundaries of the R&D organization, which we propose mitigates many of the risks and pitfalls associated with typical crowdsourcing initiatives.”

IRL ensured that its selected challenge had a fit with its own science and research resources, could make a difference to the country (and its economic health) and had a degree of sexiness (sticK, not Victoria Business School’s terminology) that would resonate with the general public and business alike. Resene Paints, and its wish to create a sustainable-base paint was the ultimate winner.

As Callaghan Innovation comes into being (and taking note of BusinessDesk journalist Pattrick Smellie’s recent article suggesting we give CI a chance to find its feet) the Davenport et al paper would be good reading for its people.

WYPNZ? was one of a number of IRL initiatives that lifted science and research beyond the white lab coat concept.

It spurred some companies which had never thought of R&D as a part of their business, to reconsider. It also brought (as the paper points out) many, many more partnering research opportunities IRL’s way.

WYPNZ? also dovetailed strongly, as you’d expect being its instigator, with IRL’s strengths.

But most of all it was fun.

And that’s an ‘f’ word we should allow ourselves, along with another one – failure.




The Power of Un-Location gets an airing Peter Kerr Apr 16

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Toby Ruckert of Unified Inbox had an interesting blog recently – demonstrating what he has called the Power of Un-Location.

(sticK had a blog on an earlier version of Unified Inbox here.)

For a brief period while in Shanghai, he (relatively unintentionally) went back in time 25 years or so, where he didn’t have a mobile phone or internet connection. In this he found quite a freedom.

Toby’s expressed many of the disconcerting pressures and issues that some of us have about always being connected, always feeling like you’re having to check in to see who has been checking in. I see some of the same in my own children and their relationship with Facebook, (I’m probably one of its worst users).

It is not difficult to see why some researchers believe that modern children are having their brains rewired differently to how older generations did – a result of all this immediate connectivity and ability to find an answer to any question straight away.

I thoroughly recommend a read of Toby’s blog. He articulates some excellent reasons for disconnecting for a little bit at least – not the least of which can be summarised as ‘sanity’.

There’s always a danger in considering the past to have been slightly more rosy-coloured than today, but he raises some good points in his discussion.

His blog also points to other examples of people reverting, at least temporarily, to a non-connected lifestyle.

I’m sure that in the not too distant future, doctors and others will thoroughly recommend, if not almost force, all of us to have a break from always being on. In the meantime, thanks Toby for highlighting the Power of Un-Location.




Lightning Labs shows off its first flowers of startup blooming Peter Kerr Apr 10

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Lightning Labs, a lean startup hub of selected neophyte companies located for three months on Wellington’s The Terrace, gave a ‘where we’re at, what we’ve learned’ quickfire talks recently.

The fullhouse (dozens on the waiting list), heard how the nine IT-oriented businesses are going, how they’ve changed and pivoted (or spivoted as Questo described their 360° return to where they began) and how they’re achieving product-market fit.

All are using the lean startup methodology and being heavily mentored in the expectation that many will attract new and additional investment at a formal pitch session Demo Day at Te Papa on May 15.

The nine startups, whittled down from an original 87 applications, have received up to $18,000 for the three month internship cum building platform. LL’s organisers, Dave Moskovitz, Creative HQ and many others describe it as being a means to build a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem across New Zealand, and have modified America’s TechStars model for Kiwi sensibilities.

Lighntning Lab is sponsored by CreativeHQ, MBIE, ninetwenty recruitment, The Wellington Company, Weta Digital, FX Netowrks, TradeMe and CityLink.

It is all part of, in sticK’s opinion, a maturing and reality check on the difficult feat of turning an idea into a product or service that someone will buy. That, or creating a fast-failure so an entrepreneur can get on with another project that does have market potential.

The three month intensive is divided into thirds (with participants currently halfway through):

· First month –validation & mentor bombardment (asking questions, testing hypotheses)
· Second month – build a structure
· Third month – prepare for investment….and beyond

One interesting feature, is a weekly group evaluation of everyone’s progress and ranking (which varies). This ever-changing ranking graphically shows how well teams are considered to be going.

For the record, the presentations and brief explanation of the startups are: (The companies and original market intent can be found here.

A point to note is the change in description of what the startups consider to be their market, and/or problem they’re solving).

Questo! – platform to connect parents and their children and share photos (in particular)

KidsGoMobile – a means to make children’s smartphone use safer by enabling parents to have an overview of who they’re connecting

withPromoki – a collaborative media project to use crowdsourcing to make and tell stories (particularly around brands)

Teamisto – social media platform for grass root sports teams, allowing them to interact with and provide value to local businesses that may wish to be sponsors

Expander – tracking and analytics platform to protect brands, first aimed at NZ food and beverage productsMyBuy – mobile marketing platform particularly aimed at SME’s

Publons – building a way for academics to publish articles without having to use a journal (publication)

WIP – cloud-based collaboration tool for film-making and editing

LearnCOACH – platform to allow one-on-one, conversational english tuition to non-english students

As programme director Dan Khan says, “the lean startup methodology is a set of very commonsense techniques.”

“What is also really important is the importance of a vision – defined in a way that allows a company, when pivoting, to remain within that vision,” he says.

To have such a vision, a company needs a good idea of what problem it is trying to solve, and that there’s a big enough pain point to provide a product that customers will love.

Roll on (and even role on) May 15 – the proof of the (investment) pudding for Lightning Labs first cohort of graduates!




Adding a hole lot of value to a piece of pine Peter Kerr Apr 04

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We all know that we’d prefer to export more than just a log of pine to overseas markets.

At the same time, the NZ Inc desire to add value to our raw commodities such as trees is almost tiresome through over-use.

So, it is a pleasure to be able to highlight a company and person doing something different and in their case, making a better pine pole.

Now TTT Products (and no, I’d never heard of them either until going through a recent exercise to maximise the return from a 20 year old four hectare block of pines that I’m involved with) isn’t a small firm. Its North Island headquarters at Tuakau covers 20ha, specialising in creating pine poles of many different sorts.

It may even seem to be a coals to Newcastle scenario, but TTT exports a fair number of these poles all around the Pacific and even to Europe and North America. This is partly because only pinus radiate (and Southern Yellow Pine) can take up the anti-insect, anti-corrosion chemical preservatives that then guarantee a longevity when buried in the ground.

However, the other clever product from TTT, partly ‘inspired’ by the recent Christchurch earthquakes, is what is called a MultiPole (and the basic focus of this blog)

It is a pole that’s actually a tube – TTT managing director John Reelick having perfected (and is keeping secret) a means to drill a long 50 – 150mm diameter hole in a pole. The pole is no weaker, and indeed, because the preservative chemicals can also be applied from the inside out, even more protected against rotting when in the ground.

What MultiPoles allow is a range of tools and complementary products such as cement or grout, that can be deployed because of this hole/tube.

For example, a water jet can be used to help clear the way and push the pole into the ground.

There’s a swag of engineering proofs and performance criteria, and Reelick and his team have further refined the MultiPole over the past couple of years.

Equally, the company’s demonstrating the versatility and application of poles as a modern building material for (rebuilding) Christchurch. They’ve built five storey offices, and a 15 storey model has also been proven as viable for the Garden City.

Which, is quite a lot of value-add for commodity, and an example of taking a raw material and making it work better.

Fantastic stuff all round. Keep up the good work TTT!

P.S.

The MultiPole appears to be a perfect, exportable, value-add product beyond a commodity. I’m sure John Reedick and his team have ideas they would like funding to research and perfect.

Callaghan Innovation has the mandate to be proactive – go give these guys a hand up.

They already know their market, and have a special product with, as IT businesses like to call it, a secret sauce (how to make the holes).

In the scheme of things, a very good CI investment bet for a multiple (or multipole in this case) return.




Dyed in the wool innovation partners up to go global Peter Kerr Apr 02

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The time it takes to convert a good idea into something that another person’s willing to buy is almost invariably longer than you think.

A couple of years ago, sticK reported on BGI Developments’ winning the right to commercialise AgResearch’s new textile fabric dyeing process.

The beauty of this process is different dye colours don’t bleed into each other – the picture or pattern remains sharp and embedded in the fabric (unlike say printing on top of a T-shirt for example).

BGI (stands for Bloody Good Ideas) directors Robyn George-Neich and Brent Gregory have spent part of the past two years looking for the right company to take the technology to the global market.

They now reckon they’ve found this key partner, American company Global Merino, San Anselmo, California headquartered.

George-Neich says the licenced technology allows designers to use merino in creative ways never before possible. This includes being able to choose colours and designs just before entering the market. Such flexibility of production reduces both the manufacturing and retailer risk.

BGI has spent the past year on commercial trials at Global Merino’s Melbourne facility, taking the innovation to commercial production.

Meanwhile, Global Merino report that their buyers’ responses to the new way of creating garments and graphics is “overwhelmingly positive”.

So, today the laboratory bench, tomorrow (or a few days after!), the world.

What this demonstrates is the value of partnership.

AgResearch’s mandate and strengths (these days) is not necessarily in commercialisation. That’s where BGI have come to the party. BGI doesn’t have the market depth or width to take the innovation to the world – that’s where Global Merino distribution is crucial.

BGI’s looking for other sectors of the textile market where the new dyeing technology can be applied, and AgResearch is trialling applications on wool in it various forms.

As George-Neich says, each of the parties would not be able to achieve alone what they can by working together.

She expects products made using the technology to be on shelves in 2014.

As a fusion of high performance and improved merino wool technologies and just-in-time fashion, this go to market model has a lot going for it.

Partnering, the right partnering, pays.




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