Law and Water: Swedish Visitors Unit

We started our Friday at Valea Technology and Law and followed it up with Xylem Water Technologies. We had a much appreciated shopping break in between and then welcomed the weekend with dinner and drinks at O’Leary’s!

To be 100% honest, I wasn’t super excited about spending my morning listening to a presentation at a law office, but Valea was the perfect example of why you should never judge a book by it’s cover. Valea is a law firm in Goteborg that specializes in intellectual property law. We had to sign a nondisclosure agreement to protect the privacy of their clients. In general, Valea helps their clients make money from their inventions and strengthen their competitive advantage.

Valea gave us a crash course on intellectual properties such as patents, trademarks, copyrights, and industrial design rights, but there was one thing that really struck me. They said “just because you have a brilliant idea, doesn’t mean you’ll make money off of it”. They gave the example of how DaVinci actually developed the concept of the helicopter, but since the market wasn’t ready yet, he never received recognition. They also talked about how you need to be prepared to support the invention if it takes off. If you don’t have the resources to meet demand, a larger competitor will find a way and take it away from you.

Our second visit of the day was Xylem. I was super excited about this one becuase I was assigned to research it prior to they trip. Xylem is a water technology solutions company who’s mission is “to efficiently save, protect, & control water every day”. Their tagline is “lets solve water”; “lets” represents collaboration and “solve water” is a promise of action.

At Xylem we learned that the demand for water will increase by 5 times by 2050. However, the amount of water available will remain the same. This means that we need to start being smarter about how we are using our water and make more educated choices with our water technology.

Coffee Break
You can’t walk more than 5 feet without seeing an Espresso House in Goteborg. We finally stopped at one today and I ordered myself a Vanilla Latte. It was even better than the one I got at Tin Tins! The Espresso House reminded me a lot of Starbucks but was a little cozier and quieter.

Cocktail Hour
We had a very “American” cocktail hour at O’Leary’s Sportsbar. I tried the Falcon Export (so good!) and we played some air hockey, skee ball, and bowling! On our way home, we stopped at a crepe stand where I got one with nutella, banana, and coconut….. AMAZING!!

Today’s Top Three
1. IKEA was created as a byproduct from Swedish forestry.
2. Sparkling water (or as we call it, “angry water”) is the default drinking water in Sweden. You have to specifically request still water.
3. Fika is practically mandatory and the highlight of the week for most Swedes.