Inventors Rewarded

The Innovation Fund, in a drive to stimulate the filing of patent applications at research institutions has offered a Patent Incentive Fund to reward inventors for each granted South African patent.

Prof Gerhard De Jager and Gordon Forbes were recognised for the fifth in a series of inventions relating to the SmartFroth technology that has been developed at UCT to use image analysis to evaluate mineral flotation froths as the basis for process control. A license agreement is being finalised for the commercialisation of Prof Jon Tapson's innovative sensor that he received the award for and Prof Daan Steenkamp's mycothiol, manufactured using his patented purification process, will hopefully be sold through a global chemical reagent supplier in 2009.

Cynthia Best, Senior IP Officer at RCIPS, applies annually on behalf of the UCT inventors for the award and ensures that a number of criteria, such as a completed prior art search, have been met. Click here to read more about the DST's Patent Incentive Fund.

At an institutional level, UCT also received just over R 420,000 from the Innovation Fund's Patent Support Fund, which seeks to support tertiary institutions in their IP protection endeavors. The amount represents a refund of 50% of the expenses incurred by UCT for the protection of our Intellectual Property, provided that certain conditions have been met.