Four innovative companies awarded at the INPI 2017 trophies

POIETIS, EXPLISEAT, MOULIN ROTY and THE INSTITUTE LIGHT MATERIAL are the winners of the INPI 2017 trophies, whose ceremony took place on December 6. The names of the four laureates, distinguished for the exemplary nature of their innovation and industrial property strategies, were unveiled in the auditorium of the Gaîté Lyrique.

 

An addition to its action of registering and issuing titles (patents, trademarks, designs and models), the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) wants to act in favour of economic development through its actions to raise awareness and promote innovation and its stakes. The institute supports all innovators so that they can transform their projects into concrete achievements, their innovations into value.

This year, the INPI had chosen to highlight what characterizes innovation "à la française" with the theme "Sacrés Français! ».

With this theme, the House of Innovators salutes the "je-ne-sais-quoi" that makes our creativity so unique, so singular. Impertinent, unexpected, audacious... the list of adjectives is long to try to define this nature, firmly anchored at the heart of projects and those who deploy them.

With the INPI Trophies, which reward innovative companies and the quality of their industrial property strategy, we want to highlight successes, to serve as a model and inspiration for other entrepreneurs. » said Romain Soubeyran, Director General of INPI.

 

"I come from an environment where innovation is vital and dazzling, which is why I am delighted and proud to preside over the INPI Trophies. Innovating requires courage and agility: I am very impressed by the 2017 winners, who present very successful innovations in promising markets. »

Catherine Maunoury, President of the jury of the INPI 2017 Trophies, the youngest pilot in France at the age of 17, holder of 10 French aerobatics championship titles and 2 world championship titles, the first woman to head the Paris-Le Bourget Air and Space Museum and the first woman to head the Aéro-Club de France.

 

Winner in the Patent category, Poietis opens up the field of possibilities in the field of human tissue transplantation, thanks to its 3D bio-imprinting technology.

 

Will it soon be possible to print 3D human tissue and implant it in patients? This is the ambition of Poietis, which designs and develops human biological tissue. For the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industry, in order to test the effectiveness of their products while avoiding animal testing. And, in the long term, for regenerative medicine, to make up for the shortage of organs and tissues.

Laser bio-printing enables tissue constituents to be printed with microscopic resolution and precision. It is coupled with two other technologies: the first, upstream, creates the structure of the tissue in 3D; the second, downstream, allows to validate the maturation of the tissue, which only takes its final shape after a few days.

A feat that has enabled Poietis to sign several agreements with partners, including L'Oréal and BASF Beauty Care Solutions, respectively for hair care studies and for testing new cosmetics.

Poietis is the first company in the world to exploit this technology, initially developed at INSERM and the University of Bordeaux, and has already filed seven patents. In the still emerging field of bio-printing, the company is convinced that its development depends on intellectual property. It has been very closely supported by the INPI, which first carried out a pre-diagnosis of intellectual property for it and then co-financed the drafting of a collaborative contract thanks to the "IP Pass" scheme. The company's managers then chose to follow a "Industrial Property Master Class", which enabled them, at a crucial moment in the development of their company, to build, with full knowledge of the facts, their intellectual property strategy, in the service of their strategic objectives and choices.

 

" Our medium-term ambition - which has guided us from the beginning - is that our technology should be usable in the clinical field, particularly in skin grafts. This INPI Trophy is a recognition of our innovative approach, it is also a recognition of the uniqueness of our technology. Being the only ones to develop it, the issue of intellectual property is fundamental, and it will be essential in the future, especially when our technology is commercialized. We are therefore developing our R&D by accompanying it with a systematic policy of filing patents. "according to Fabien Guillemot, Founder and Chairman.

 

ExpliSeat, winner in the Design category, reinvents transport seats to make them lighter and more environmentally friendly.

 

16.5 tonnes less in the sky: that's what ExpliSeat claims, thanks to the 1,500 aircraft seats already sold to airlines on four continents. This seat - 4 kg for the E1 model, compared to 9 to 12 kg for the best competitors - is indeed the lightest in the world today, thanks to its combination of new materials (composite and titanium) and a redesigned design. These developments reduce the weight of aircraft - and consequently their fuel consumption - and make it possible to serve "small" airports, thanks to lighter aircraft, thus having a real environmental and societal impact.

The technological lead, protected by industrial property titles, enables ExpliSeat to offer its customers a unique and differentiating value proposition: for ExpliSeat, innovation is the driving force behind the company's development and commercial growth.

 

For Benjamin Saada, co-founder and President of ExpliSeat, "... I would like to thank you for your support. We created our company in 2011 starting from a blank page, with a very precise objective but without preconceived ideas on how to achieve it: how to make seats lighter without using metal parts. And we succeeded! Today we are proud of this INPI Trophy! As a French company, which has benefited from the country's technological heritage, we wanted to do two things: manufacture our seats locally and export them all over the world, which means protecting our innovations. So we invested a lot in intellectual property. This INPI Trophy is a form of reward for this policy. "

 

Winner in the Brand category, Moulin Roty builds its story around those it has been telling children for over 40 years.

 

Who doesn't know the "Zazous", the "Pachats" or the "Jolis pas Beaux", illustrious members of the great Moulin Roty family? Since 1972, Moulin Roty - which owes its name to the hamlet in which the entrepreneurial adventure began - has been inventing tender and fanciful worlds, declined in toys, characters, accessories and decorative objects.

The brand's creativity is one of the reasons for its success: the arrival of Louna the bee and its bright colours was a turning point in the world of childcare, which until then had been very much focused on pastel colours. In order to protect its creations, Moulin Roty has registered 70 designs and models, but also six trademarks and two patents and has brought about ten actions against counterfeiters in the last three years. The toy maker now sells 1.5 million products each year and plans to bring us many more enchanting stories.

 

" When we register our trademarks and designs with the INPI, it is because we need to protect something that is dear to us: the durability of Moulin Roty rests on its creativity. Our clients are, I believe, attached to the brand and its universe. We also innovate in our business model because we are a Scop. This Trophée INPI therefore represents a form of recognition of all our actions and of what constitutes our brand. "said Christine Jaffré, Development Manager of the retail division.

 

Winner in the Research category, the ILM uses light to probe and shape matter, and to continue its work on the characterization of materials on all dimensional and temporal scales.

 

The Institut Lumière Matière (CNRS/Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1) is an interdisciplinary centre of excellence based on the synergy between physics, chemistry and their interfaces (engineering, biology, health, environment).

Some examples of the research work of its collaborators? Understanding and controlling the properties of liquids and surface phenomena to generate unexpected behaviours or developing and characterizing functional materials with innovative optical, magnetic, thermal and acoustic properties. With an average of six patent applications filed per year, ILM has implemented a strong policy of protecting its innovations, leading to the creation of several startups, such as NanoH or Ablatom. Since 2014, ILM can notably rely on PULSALYS (SATT Lyon Saint-Etienne) to facilitate technology transfer to civil society.

 

"Each year, we file an average of 5 or 6 patents and sign about 20 industrial collaboration contracts. In less than two years, we have seen the birth of three spin-offs from the laboratory and one startup, which has left to develop in another region. This INPI Trophy is very important and rewarding for our laboratory because our policy is precisely to develop the valorisation of research and innovation. » Brigitte Prével, Deputy Director for Promotion and Communication.