Press
Economics and Business / Emilia-Romagna
Wednesday, 13 of June 2007- N.23
The character: Over 30 patents granted to Pier Giorgio Pifferi, from a counterfeit money tester to selenium potatoes.
INVENTIONS WHICH CHANGE LIVES by Stefano Aurighi
He has introduced selenium potatoes to Western cuisine, protected businesses from counterfeit Euros thanks to his "Eurotesterpen", but has also pioneered a new, technologically innovative method of extracting antioxidants both from the skin of grapes and from the water produced by vegetating olives, as well as finalizing the chemical formula to remove micotoxins and pesticides from durum wheat seeds. Furthermore, he can also revel in the fact that he managed to silence members of an American opposition who attempted to bring into question the validity of the patent on his counterfeit money tester pen.
These are only some of the many patents belonging to Pier Giorgio Pifferi, 75 years old, director of the Specialization School of Food Chemistry and Technologies at the University of Bologna until 2000. He has divided the time of his university career between the classroom and the laboratory, due to his cardinal belief that research must be funded and carried out with the goal to better the lives of those who help fund it. "The average university researcher doesn't use its "own" laboratory, but instead utilizes the one which the community provides to help improve their quality of life" confirms Pifferi, who has been the director of I.D.Tech in Bologna since 2001 and is known all over Italy as one of the country's most prolific inventors. "This is possible thanks to innovation, which has its roots and is mainly fostered in the multidisciplinary environment of the laboratory itself. Pifferi continues, "They are innovations which aim is to improve the quality of daily life, whether it be regarding health, such as the antioxidant properties of selenium potatoes, the fruit of the labor between university researchers and the Consorzio della Patata Tipica Bolognese, or regarding the economic well-being of businesses and businesses owners, who can breathe a sigh of relief thanks to the "Eurotesterpen", a tool developed by my company and manufactured in collaboration with Dobell S.p.A., able to identify counterfeit bills, checks, and government-issued gas and meal coupons." (www.idtechnology.eu)
The acts of granting and obtaining patents have historically been the subject of numerous and ugly legal battles to conquer market shares, and Pifferi himself can brag a legal victory against some US manufacturers who attempted to annul the validity of the "Eurotesterpen"'s patent in 2004. Pifferi's son Francesco, a practicing lawyer in Bologna schooled in Athens, Georgia (www.studiolegalepifferi.it) took the case on himself in order to put a stop to the Americans' ambitions. He had to go to the international courts in both Hamburg and Munich and succeeded in defending the quality of the pen in question against the Americans' vain attempts to remove it from the market. Now, as a result of his efforts, the pen is distributed in North America as well as Europe. From that moment on, Prof. Pifferi has affronted the world of patents that much stronger thanks to the support of his son in all matters regarding national and international contracts and intellectual property rights. He is continuing to do research into unexplored terrain; for example he is currently exploring the properties of baobab (which is rich in vitamin C and other beneficial substances) as well as continuing work on patenting a non-traditional method of preventing potatoes from sprouting once picked. "In research we Emilians are fortunate, our laboratories are among the best in the nation. The provinces of Modena and Bologna always put an emphasis on innovation, the proof of which is in the fact that the highest number of patents in Italy are registered in these two areas, which again I must emphasize is not done on a whim but instead as a legal means to protect and foster innovative ideas which, in a different situation, would get lost together with the money invested by the community to fund research."
