Standardising through concepts: scientific experts and the international development of the HACCP Food Safety Standard

This paper deals with international standard-setting. Using the HACCP food safety standard as the basis of discussion, this paper considers the influence of scientific experts on the regulatory process. What is usually referred to as the diffusion or dissemination of soft or voluntary standards is here explained in terms of transferability of a regulatory concept. It is the ability of scientific experts to transform practices into a universal concept and, conversely, to develop technologies for users which translate the concept into practice, that explains why this reference has travelled so well across countries, industry sectors and historical periods. Scientific experts played a translating role between standard-setters and groups of practical users. This highlights the counter-intuitive distribution of power in standard-setting: while experts dominate the development of generic rules, official rule-makers (such as governments) assert their authority by developing alternative technologies for the appropriation of the standard by users and, sometimes, allow the latter to deviate from experts' universal concepts where these are shown to be problematic

Mapping and Developing Service Design Research in the UK.

This report is the outcome of the Service Design Research UK (SDR UK) Network with Lancaster University as primary investigator and London College of Communication, UAL as co-investigator. This project was funded as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council Network grant. Service Design Research UK (SDR UK), funded by an AHRC Network Grant, aims to create a UK research network in an emerging field in Design that is Service Design. This field has a recent history and a growing, but still small and dispersed, research community that strongly needs support and visibility to consolidate its knowledge base and enhance its potential impact. Services represent a significant part of the UK economy and can have a transformational role in our society as they affect the way we organize, move, work, study or take care of our health and family. Design introduces a more human centred and creative approach to service innovation; this is critical to delivering more effective and novel solutions that have the potential to tackle contemporary challenges. Service Design Research UK reviewed and consolidated the emergence of Service Design within the estalished field of Design

Current policy issues in the governance of the European patent system

The European Parliament has been working towards building a discussion platform and a resource for further policy actions in the field of intellectual property rights. The Science and Technology Options Assessment Panel has set the goal of further enlarging the area of investigation in light of recent policy developments at the European level. In particular, the current study covers current policy issues in the governance of the European patent system, such as the backlog issue, the enhancement of patent awareness within the European Parliament, patent enforcement, the regional dimension of intellectual property in Europe, patents and standardisation, the use of existing patents, and patents and competition. These issues were discussed in the conference with stakeholders from European to national patent offices, from private to public sector actors. As a result of the conference, it was stated the need for an IP strategy for Europ