IN BRIEF

DENMARK IN THE NEWS – Paris comes to Copenhagen

It’s a fact of modern life that high-living heiress Paris Hilton generates attention wherever she goes. And that includes Denmark’s capital, where the 27 year old jetted in to promote her new handbag collection produced by Danish company PH Europe during the recent Copenhagen Fashion Week.

The Paris Hilton effect was in full swing from the moment she arrived. Paparazzi swarmed, the tabloids went into overdrive, and there was a prime-time TV interview with the starlet, who was clearly delighted at all the attention and responded in kind. “I love Denmark”, “Danes are exceptionally beautiful” and “Copenhagen is the hottest fashion city” she trilled, as celebrity gossip columnists rushed to wing the news around the planet.

Official tourist website http://www.visitcopenhagen.com is now even featuring ’Paris Hilton’s Copenhagen’ which details where she stayed, where she ate and where she went, so you can follow in her footsteps and ’release your inner diva’.

Whatever one’s feelings about the media’s ceaseless occupation with celebrities, their value for putting the places they visit in the global public eye is undeniable. And Copenhagen certainly grasped its opportunity when Paris came to town.

George Soros suggests Danish fix for US mortgage woes

Denmark’s mortgage credit system has recently made headlines in Financial Times, with 78 year-old billionaire financier George Soros recommending the Danish model as a solution to the US mortgage crisis.

According to Soros, US Treasury secretary Hank Paulson has already suggested the alternative of using covered bonds, a mortgage-financing method that enjoys popularity in Europe. But Soros has a more specific suggestion in mind:

“I would recommend the system of mortgage credit used in Denmark, where loan-to-value ratios and underwriting standards are strictly enforced by a single, strong regulator. These mortgages are transformed into instantly tradable bonds. Cover for the bonds is provided by both the mortgages and the credit of the financial institutions issuing them.”

Soros also points out that the standardisation of mortgages in the Danish system promotes transparency and liquidity, and that householders can prepay their mortgages at any time by buying the bonds. “This system has survived and provided affordable home mortgages since its creation shortly after the great Copenhagen fire of 1795,” he writes.

DAZZLING DANISH DESIGN FOR LONDON’S LATEST LANDMARK

For two years, Londoners have been watching an extraordinary piece of architecture gradually take shape in the leafy environs of South Kensington. Now completed and unveiled, the Natural History Museum’s spectacular new wing, designed by the Danish firm C. F. Møller Architects, is open to a marvelling public.

Londoners are quick to adopt their own pet names for iconic new buildings, this one instantly being dubbed “The Cocoon”. And that is exactly what C. F. Møller designed it to resemble, as a structure to safely and securely house the museum’s priceless collections of over 20 million insects and 6 million plant specimens.

Encased in a frame of steel and glass, the 65-metre-long, 8-storey-high cocoon is the most significant expansion at the museum since it moved to South Kensington in 1881. It is also officially the largest sprayed concrete, curved structure in Europe, the museum notes on its website, describing C.F. Møller’s design as “this amazing architectural achievement.”

The Danish firm won the commission to design the building – officially known as Darwin Centre Phase Two – in an international competition in 2001.

Natural History Museum: http://www.nhm.ac.uk
C.F.Møller Architects: http://www.cfmoller.com

Danish anti-spam technology judged world’s best

It is currently estimated that up to 85% of all the e-mail in the world is junk e-mail, otherwise known as spam. The resource consumption, lost productivity and annoyance associated with spam is enormous and not surprisingly, much effort is going into the development of effective spam-filtering technologies.

One technology company that has attracted attention is Danish software developer Solido Systems, whose spam filter was recently judged the world’s best at the annual conference on email and anti-spam, CEAS 2008, held at Microsoft Research in Silicon Valley, California.

The CEAS 2008 Spam Filter Challenge took place over 72 hours, during which time the competing spam filters were exposed to 110,579 spam mails and 27,125 benign emails. Solido Systems’ software filtered 99.88% of the spam.

Solido Systems: http://www.solidosystems.com

WORTH KNOWING ABOUT

As a regular new feature of In Brief, each issue will present a profile of a Danish organisation that might interest you, either as a point of contact for business activity, or to add to your knowledge of what goes on in Denmark.

Danish Patent and Trademark Office

WHO ARE THEY?
The Danish Patent and Trademark Office (DKPTO) is a department of the Danish Ministry of Economic and Business Affairs, and has many years of experience in helping businesses and authorities all over the world with their intellectual property rights (IPR).

HOW CAN THEY BE USEFUL TO YOU?
DKPTO offers a range of services to help businesses determine if their ideas are new, and to enable them to make the right IPR decisions. DKPTO also participates in capacity-building projects worldwide as well as performing contract work for other patent offices around the world.

One DKPTO service well worth a closer look is “IP Marketplace”, a unique internet-based forum for buying, selling and licensing patents. It is available in English at http://www.ip-marketplace.org

IP Marketplace shows patents for sale or licensing in 7 technology areas. Users can also list a technology that they would like to buy or license. IP Marketplace additionally features all patents issued or validated in Denmark in the last 14 days.

WANT TO CONTACT THEM?
Internet: http://www.dkpto.org (website in English)
E-mail: pvs@dkpto.dk
Tel: +45 4350 8000 (Monday – Friday 9:00-16:00, GMT + 01:00)
Fax: +45 4350 8001

BOOKMARK DENMARK

As a new feature of In Brief, each issue will highlight a selection from the wide range of upcoming conferences, exhibitions and trade fairs happening in Denmark. If there's an event in your interest area, why not bookmark it to attend? Denmark's a great place to visit!

2008

2009

A NEW FEATURE IN THE LANDSCAPE – Denmark designates first of five national parks

While national parks have long been a familiar feature of many countries, Denmark has hitherto lacked such amenities. But now the country is set to catch up fast as the first – and largest – of five national parks to be inaugurated over the next 2-3 years is officially opened in the north of Denmark.

Each of the parks to be sited around the country have been selected to preserve and maintain the characteristic features of the Danish landscape, from forests and open countryside to areas of cultivation with their hedgerows and grazing pastures, as well as lakes, coastlines and inshore waters.

Denmark’s new national parks will not have fences round them, and anyone can visit and explore them free of charge. It’s also worth noting that these parks are not museums. People live and work in them, some contain villages and urban communities, and part of the designated land is under private ownership.

Bill Gates funding for ACE BioSciences vaccine

He may no longer be the world’s richest man, but Bill Gates still has awesome amounts of cash to put to humanitarian use through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which recently invested USD 50 million in US non-profit organisation PATH’s (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health) work on diarrhoeal disease prevention.

One company to receive funding from PATH is Danish biotech firm ACE BioSciences, which is developing a vaccine against one

 of the leading causes of diarrhoeal disease, enterotoxigenic E.coli (ETEC). If the work is successful, PATH will gain the right to use the vaccine for children in developing countries, while ACE BioSciences will market it worldwide as a travel vaccine, reports Danish newspaper Fyens Stiftstidende.

Diarrhoea is the second leading cause of death in children under the age of five, killing more than 1.8 million children each year. ETEC is responsible for up to 840 million infections and around 400,000 deaths worldwide annually, most of whom are children in developing countries.

ACE BioSciences: http://www.acebiosciences.com