With global retail sales of $4 trillion (£3.1 trillion) annually, food and beverage is one of the largest sectors in the world - the top 50 food manufacturers account for 20 per cent of global packaged food retail sales¹. Food conglomerates and FMCGs regularly develop innovative food products to provide consumers with easy cooking and eating choices. Whether it’s Uncle Ben’s Rice, Heinz Ketchup, or Twinkies, there are iconic favourites in every household.

Welcome back to PatSnap Weekly. This week there have been signficant advancements in both cancer and glaucoma detection. Elsewhere, could the Iron Man suit become a reality?

This year, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) is celebrating innovations that helped to make the world healthier, safer and happier.

The fitness industry has transformed over and over in the past 50 years. From fads like the grapefruit diet, emphasis on superfoods like quinoa and exercise regimes like Zumba, the industry is constantly changing as consumers continually lose confidence with each but never give up hope in the next .

Welcome back to PatSnap Weekly after a great bank holiday weekend. This week has been a veritable glut of medical advances with big steps taken in both dementia and diabetes treatments. Elsewhere, could a new type of tumble dryer be coming?

Wearable technology can be dated back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I who was presented with the first wristwatch by court favourite Robert Dudley in 1571. The first wrist watches were reportedly so large they were called arm watches.

While governments, charities and the media attempt to change attitudes towards diet and exercise, obesity rates globally continue to grow and 42 million children under the age of five worldwide are now overweight¹.

The 3D printing of food, like most other applications of the new tech, is still struggling against the bonds of novelty. While 3D printed candies and other sculpted dishes are most certainly impressive, it will be applications which can produce healthy food easily, quickly and cheaply that establish the technology as feasible.

Last week, we discussed how a rising global population places strain on methods of food production and how technological advances could be used to feed 10 billion people. 

But that was only half the tale. Providing food security to so many people relies on technological innovations to solve problems at such a scale that IP conflicts occur regularly. Unfortunately, a system designed to protect and incentivise innovation can actually stifle development and even exacerbate issues.

In this article, we will look at the role IP plays in agriculture and how that impacts a stretching global food chain.

Welcome to our first PatSnap Weekly of April. Despite plenty of April Fools (none included here), there are still a lot of great developments including driverless buses patrolling the streets of London, a new doomsday vault and breakthrough discoveries into how we create memories.