Nicolas Buck, President of FEDIL, the Federation of Luxembourgish Industrials, attended this special evening as guest of honor. The event was opened by Bernd Kutsch, in charge of the Goodyear Innovation Center (GIC*L) patent department.

As a keynote speaker, Mr. Buck congratulated all the inventors for their efforts and explained the importance of innovations for a company to stay ahead of competition.

Chris Helsel, President of Goodyear Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Chris Delaney, President Goodyear EMEA then engaged in a small roundtable led by Carlos Cipollitti, Vice President EMEA for Product Development. Both detailed their views of the impact of the many patents and trade secrets generated by the inventors and their importance to the road strategy map.

Nicolas Buck joined the group to reward the inventors with the ‘Patent and Trade Secret Award’ plates. This year, the associates came from Luxembourg (GIC*L and GE*L), Hanau/Germany research and development facilities, from Tilburg in the Netherlands as well as from the Regional Office.

The special distinction of the Inventor of the Year award went to Kanwar SINGH from GIC*L for his great contribution to the Intelligent Tire project, by translating tire derived data into data usable by the vehicle and the vehicle electronics and by external databases and services.

Sébastien Fontaine, industrial designer at Goodyear in Colmar-Berg, reached the level of 100 patents and trade secrets in 2017, having meanwhile even achieved 112 patents. As such he joined the distinguished group of the ‘100 Club Crystal plate’ recipients.

The traditional group picture kept the momentum of this glamorous evening ending with the amazing show of a magician.

The Innovation Center in Colmar-Berg is the most important R&D center of the company in Europe and the second worldwide. With its 3.340 associates, Goodyear Luxembourg is the second industrial employer of the Grand Duchy.