21/06/2019 (Agence Europe) – On the occasion of the 14th edition of the 2019 European Inventor Award, held on Thursday, 20 June, the European Patent Office (EPO) awarded five inventors who created “outstanding patents". The awards were given to: Klaus Feichtinger and Manfred Hackl (Austria), for their work in the field of more efficient plastic recycling; - Jérôme Galon (France), who initiated an early-stage cancer screening test; - Akira Yoshino (Japan), for inventing and refining the lithium-ion battery used in smartphones and electric vehicles; - Rik Breur (Netherlands), for developing an ecological alternative to toxic marine paints; - Margarita Salas Falgueras (Spain), for developing a way to quickly duplicate DNA samples for genome analysis. (PH)