Avery Dennison, the $6 billion turnover California packaging and location tech giant, has invested in an £18 million funding round for Cambridge UK flexible electronics business PragmatIC.

Avery Dennison is a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Pasadena with leading global positions in labelling and packaging materials as well as radio frequency identification (RFID).

The US company joins existing shareholders Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC) and Cambridge technology giant ARM, who also participated in the round.

The investment is expected to accelerate the mass deployment of intelligent packaging, with Avery Dennison leveraging the potential of PragmatIC’s flexible integrated circuits (flexICs) in its inlays portfolio.

Scott White, PragmatIC’s CEO, who six months ago collected a Business Weekly award for the technology, said: “Avery Dennison works with more than 10,000 converters, brand owners and retailers worldwide, making them an ideal supply chain partner to deliver solutions based on our unique technology.

“We appreciate the confidence in our business reflected by this investment from Avery Dennison, as well as continued strong backing from CIC and ARM.

“The funding provides full support for our next stage of evolution, moving from pilot scale production to enable volume manufacturing with the FlexLogIC equipment.”

Avery Dennison’s Francisco Melo said the company was excited about the collaboration which, he said, “presents a promising opportunity to build on our high volume RFID inlay manufacturing capabilities.

“With PragmatIC’s technology, there is the potential to extend the use of unique item-level digital identities to improve consumer experiences in a number of new segments, such as fast-moving consumer goods.”

The funding round supports PragmatIC’s development and commercialisation of its FlexLogIC fab-in-a-box equipment. This modular system facilitates fully automated, high throughput production of flexICs and is designed to fit naturally into the supply chain for a wide variety of intelligent packaging solutions.

Victor Christou, CEO of Cambridge Innovation Capital, said: “This funding allows PragmatIC to deliver into the market a tool for producing flexible integrated circuits at an unprecedentedly low unit price point. We believe this is an important step forward to commercially affordable smart packaging.”

PragmatIC’s ultra low cost flexible electronics are said to enable the potential for trillions of smart objects that can sense and communicate with their environment. 
Its technology platform enables integrated circuits thinner than a human hair that can be easily embedded in any surface, introducing interactivity into a wide range of everyday items.

At a fraction of the price of conventional silicon chips, PragmatIC’s products enable a vast range of new applications: from intelligent packaging of fast-moving consumer goods, to wireless traceability of documents for security and identification.

The company’s growing customer base includes large multi-national customers across a number of sectors, including consumer goods, packaging, security printing and mainstream electronics.
 

Avery Dennison, the $6 billion turnover California packaging and location tech giant, has invested in an £18 million funding round for Cambridge UK flexible electronics business PragmatIC.

Avery Dennison is a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Pasadena with leading global positions in labelling and packaging materials as well as radio frequency identification (RFID).

The US company joins existing shareholders Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC) and Cambridge technology giant ARM, who also participated in the round.

The investment is expected to accelerate the mass deployment of intelligent packaging, with Avery Dennison leveraging the potential of PragmatIC’s flexible integrated circuits (flexICs) in its inlays portfolio.

Scott White, PragmatIC’s CEO, who six months ago collected a Business Weekly award for the technology, said: “Avery Dennison works with more than 10,000 converters, brand owners and retailers worldwide, making them an ideal supply chain partner to deliver solutions based on our unique technology.

“We appreciate the confidence in our business reflected by this investment from Avery Dennison, as well as continued strong backing from CIC and ARM.

“The funding provides full support for our next stage of evolution, moving from pilot scale production to enable volume manufacturing with the FlexLogIC equipment.”

Avery Dennison’s Francisco Melo said the company was excited about the collaboration which, he said, “presents a promising opportunity to build on our high volume RFID inlay manufacturing capabilities.

“With PragmatIC’s technology, there is the potential to extend the use of unique item-level digital identities to improve consumer experiences in a number of new segments, such as fast-moving consumer goods.”

The funding round supports PragmatIC’s development and commercialisation of its FlexLogIC fab-in-a-box equipment. This modular system facilitates fully automated, high throughput production of flexICs and is designed to fit naturally into the supply chain for a wide variety of intelligent packaging solutions.

Victor Christou, CEO of Cambridge Innovation Capital, said: “This funding allows PragmatIC to deliver into the market a tool for producing flexible integrated circuits at an unprecedentedly low unit price point. We believe this is an important step forward to commercially affordable smart packaging.”

PragmatIC’s ultra low cost flexible electronics are said to enable the potential for trillions of smart objects that can sense and communicate with their environment. 
Its technology platform enables integrated circuits thinner than a human hair that can be easily embedded in any surface, introducing interactivity into a wide range of everyday items.

At a fraction of the price of conventional silicon chips, PragmatIC’s products enable a vast range of new applications: from intelligent packaging of fast-moving consumer goods, to wireless traceability of documents for security and identification.

The company’s growing customer base includes large multi-national customers across a number of sectors, including consumer goods, packaging, security printing and mainstream electronics.
 

Japanese and French companies have further internationalised the Cambridge UK business community with moves into the science & technology heartland in recent months.

Property consultancy Savills says Cambridge has seen a surge of incoming businesses – notably in technology – throughout the summer. It says any post Brexit vote blues have been banished in the cluster.

Will Clarke at Savills said that in the last two months there had been a number of transactions that have seen international occupiers commit to the region – “rubber-stamping the city’s reputation as a world-class centre for R & D, innovation and technology.”

Examples cited are Enplas Corporation, a Japanese life sciences and engineering firm, which has recently taken 1,515 sq ft at Chesterford Research Park and French-owned SBM Life Science UK Ltd.

The French company, SBM, recently acquired part of Bayer Environmental Science and will be focusing on biologics, soils and fertiliser products from its new 4,571 sq ft UK and Ireland headquarters at Technopark.

Clarke said Cambridge had also attracted a number of newcomers, mostly in the tech sector.

“These businesses have continued to migrate towards the city centre, adding to the growing cluster of incumbent occupiers. Bateman House, for instance, located on Hills Road, has almost reached full occupation in the past 12 months, welcoming five new tech companies to the area.

“These include Genestack, Intrasonics, Docker, Electric Imp and Malin Life Sciences. They have joined established businesses such as Raspberry Pi, which took more than 7,000 sq ft at 30 Station Road and AstraZeneca, which now occupy a total of circa 59,000 sq ft at Academy House and City House, also on Hills Road, cementing the city centre’s status as a growing tech and pharmaceutical hub.”

According to Savills, take-up in the Cambridge office market hit circa 200,000 sq ft in July and August alone, reflecting a 21 per cent increase on the the first-half total of 165,000 sq ft.

“Despite a slow start to 2016, figures suggest it is now business as usual for Cambridge post-Brexit. As a result, we remain confident that businesses are taking their finger off of the pause button and are starting to look for new space in the city.

“Existing occupiers, mostly startups that have outgrown incubator space in the business and innovation parks, are now looking to move into bigger and more central premises.

“The amount of space currently under offer almost certainly signifies an end to the period of indecision that occurred in the first six months of the year prior to the referendum.

“This latest activity is a testament to the underlying strength of the Cambridge market. Whilst there is undoubtedly some uncertainty still to come, we are confident that Cambridge will continue to weather the storm well.

“Overall, supply still remains low, however there is  hope that this positive sentiment will encourage further development in the city, which in turn should have a good impact on the market as a whole.”
 

3D printing technology has advanced significantly in a relatively short period of time, writes Maria Peyman, senior associate, Birketts LLP. The advances have resulted in it becoming more affordable, leading to an increase in the popularity of self-production.

Given the range of products that can be created through 3D printing any of the ‘traditional’ intellectual property (IP) rights may apply to a printed item. Patents could apply to a printed item as a whole, or component parts of the printed item.

Registered designs can protect the appearance of an item or parts of an item, whilst unregistered design rights apply to the shape and configuration of items and will equally apply to any copies.

Copyright may protect the CAD files as well as the printed items if they are ‘artistic works’. Lastly, of course there is the trade mark aspect which will apply if the items are printed with a brand name or logo. However, the advent of self-production is not without its side effects. Arguably, self-printing of goods disconnects from the concept of another party’s IP rights and policing the infringement of your own IP rights is harder.

On a basic level, any copying of an object which is protected by intellectual property laws will be an infringement if it is done without permission; this is no different for traditionally manufactured goods or those produced by 3D printing using a computer aided design (CAD). On that basis, although infringement actions can be brought through the courts, as in any other infringement claim, the reality is that it may be difficult to identify the infringers.

Traditionally manufactured counterfeit items can be seized on import and Customs authorities play a vital role in stopping counterfeit goods reaching market.

The use of CAD files means that the physical goods will not cross borders in the traditional way; the CAD file can be sent and the recipient merely needs a 3D printer. In due course, there may be a more active role for Trading Standards to address counterfeit items within the jurisdiction.

Where CAD files are copied and released online there may be specific actions which can be taken to remove the infringing files, and this is easier if the files have clearly been illegitimately obtained.

There is also the possibility of taking action against internet service providers (ISPs) which are easier to locate than the owners of websites. Known as blocking injunctions these have, particularly in light of recent cases in other areas involving ISPs, the potential to become a popular and potentially cost effective remedy against infringement.

Infringement
The production of items bearing a brand name or logo, even for individual use, may infringe trade marks.

In the fields of patent and design law the making of spare parts can, sometimes, be considered an exception to infringement, the result being a potential market for exploitation. However, the courts have given clear guidance as to when spare parts can be manufactured without infringing so careful analysis must be applied to the spare part to be printed so as to avoid any assertions of infringement.

This potential market may conversely result in manufacturers being keener to register a patent that is specifically directed to spare parts and potential spare parts for their products.

In the fields of patent and design law there is also an exception to infringement where it is for personal use but this exception does not exist in respect of copyright.

In light of the potential difficulties with addressing infringement, and indeed the potential for perfectly legitimate printing of items, there may be many commercial entities which decide to view the increase in 3D printing as a new opportunity to exploit the assets they hold – for example, design owners licensing use of their design files, providing a one print sale where a design is sent direct to the printer or using 3D printing technology in store to provide bespoke items for the client. 

• You can call Maria Peyman on 01223 326596 or email her at:
maria-peyman [at] birketts.co.uk

Cambridge’s global kudos as a breeding ground for cutting edge Artificial Intelligence has been strengthened further by a new startup that has raised £1.5 million seed funding from key investors in the space.

PROWLER.io will initially focus on gaming then move into autonomous vehicles, smart city simulations and synergistic autonomous systems including drones and robots.

It has been backed by Hermann Hauser’s Amadeus Capital Partners, which was in on the ground floor of VocalIQ, Passion Capital and Infocomm Investments.

PROWLER.io bots use ‘reinforcement learning’ – a subset of machine learning which enables long chains of complex decisions to be made autonomously, so bots can learn and adapt to changing environments.

CEO Vishal Chatrath has come out of VocalIQ, a speech-related AI company sold to Apple in October 2015 for up to $100 million.

The seed cash will enable the UK startup to build a prototype version of its platform with select partners. Initially the company will target games developers, with numerous other sectors to follow. Starting in the gaming industry, PROWLER.io’s technology will enable superior decision-making and much more natural in-game behaviour from non-player characters (NPCs) through AI, revolutionising current games industry techniques and thinking.

NPC behaviour is currently still controlled by hand-crafted decision rules, often leading to unnatural and repetitive gameplay. Using machine learning instead enables improved testing and an enhanced gameplay experience, as well as speeding development and making it far less cumbersome.

In addition to gaming, PROWLER.io is looking towards autonomous vehicles (cars, drones, etc.), smart city simulations and robotics as additional fields which can benefit from the application of bots which are autonomous, tunable and self-learning.

The development path for those sectors is similar to that required by gaming and therefore the research is easily transferable to many other use cases and commercial opportunities. Analysts predict that these industries will reach a combined total value of more than $1 trillion by 2025.

The technology powers highly artificially intelligent bots which learn and adapt to changing environments – making NPCs act much more naturally in an environment being destroyed in a video game gun battle, or enabling an autonomous vehicle to deal intelligently with the constantly changing road and traffic conditions around it.

Vishal Chatrath said: “Gaming is a 100-billion-dollar industry which is still reliant on hugely complex, inflexible and expensive hand-made decision rules. As well as being extremely labour-intensive to build, they also deliver a substandard experience for gamers: NPCs don’t evolve as the game environment changes, for example.

“With so many games now relying on extended playing time to generate revenue, it’s more important than ever for developers that games don’t become boring or repetitive. Sophisticated AI and machine learning is the best way to create and deliver that experience, and can reduce cost at the same time. It’s a win-win.

“Looking at other applications and industries, the use of next-generation machine learning algorithms greatly reduces the cost and difficulty of developing highly intelligent AI bots, improving safety and utility in all sorts of applications and saving billions of dollars in development costs in the process.”

Hermann Hauser added: “Clearly there are very compelling investment opportunities around reinforcement learning, which is one of the most active research areas in AI and machine learning.

“As a research-led start-up, PROWLER.io is at the very forefront of this emerging technology and is leading the charge to apply reinforcement learning to many current and future challenges. This state-of-the-art technology will continue to develop in the coming years and there are certain to be important applications that we haven’t yet considered.”

PROWLER.io’s advisory board comprises some of the world’s foremost experts in machine learning and includes Professor Carl Rasmussen, Professor of Information Engineering, Computational and Biological Learning Laboratory, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge; Professor Kee-Eung Kim, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science,
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology; and Dr. Marc Deisenroth, Lecturer in Statistical Machine Learning at the Department of Computing, Imperial College London.

Vishal Chatrath was the first employee and management team member of VocalIQ. Before that he founded Chleon Automotive, an auto telematics company, and also led Nokia’s automotive team which developed MirrorLink, an open technology standard for connecting smartphones and cars.
CTO and co-founder Dr Dongho Kim is an expert in reinforcement learning, POMDP and statistical dialog systems. Kim first teamed up with Chatrath at VocalIQ, where he formed the core of the machine learning team.

Dongho is a former post-doctoral research associate in Cambridge University’s Engineering Department. He obtained his PhD in AI at KAIST in 2011.

The third co-founder is Aleksi Tukiainen, a former master’s student at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering where he was studying machine learning methods and control systems. Tukiainen has been designing and managing engineering projects for a number of years, working on collaboration platforms, solar vehicle design as well as self-learning robots.

Since inception in 1997, Dr Hauser’s Amadeus vehicle has raised over $1billion for investment and backed more than 100 companies in the software, mobile, internet, cyber security and medical technology sectors. The investment team is based in India, South Africa, Sweden, UK and USA, has deep experience in technology and invests in high-growth companies from early stage to pre-IPO.

Major businesses built by Amadeus include wireless trailblazer CSR – now owned by Qualcomm; Solexa, a developer of next generation genetic analysis systems, merged into Illumina to create the world leader in gene-sequencing technology; Optos, the retinal imaging company, acquired by Nikon; ForeScout, a global enterprise security vendor; Octo Telematics, the provider of insurance telematics services acquired by Renova Group; and Tobii, the global innovator in eye tracking (STO: TOBII).