AWS - Austria Wirtschaftsservice GmbH

Austria Wirtschaftsservice GmbH(aws) is Austria’s national promotional bank. The aws bank was created in 2002 following the merger of four existing organisations - the BÜRGES promotional bank for SMEs (1954), the Finance Guarantee Company (1969), the Innovation Agency (1984) and the ERP Fund (1962). It offers a broad range of company-specific investment promotion programmes and services, from the pre-seed phase up to the expansion stage, in the form of loans, guarantees, grants and/or equity as well as consultancy services. In the year 2008, aws has promoted more than 5000 projects with total financing of almost 1 billion EUR, thus creating more than 12,000 jobs.

The Patent & Licensing Department (PLM) is the business unit of aws responsible for patenting issues and for commercialising intellectual property by means of technology transfer. The core business of PLM is the implementation of innovative projects. Amongst its various services, PLM defines itself as a vital link between R&D and industry, identifying commercial applications for promising products and processes developed by Austrian scientists. In the course of the technology transfer process, PLM finds industrial partners, provides assistance during the patenting phase, and offers consulting services with regard to the exploitation of R&D results. For some time PLM has been extending its business activities and competence to multinational projects. Moreover, PLM is closely linked to international and European organisations in the field of IPR/TT, such as CREST, Proton Europe, AUTM, ASTP, LES and is also linked to ENTERPRISE EUROPE NETWORK (EEN), the world’s biggest technology transfer network.