Professor Iwan Davies occupies The Sir Julian Hodge Chair in Asset Finance Law at the University of Wales Swansea.

This endowment supports the work of the Centre for Commercial Studies at the University. This was established in 1999 with a particular emphasis upon research in contract and personal property law.

Professor Iwan Davies

Since then, the work of the Centre has expanded to include intellectual property assets which reflects the growing emergence of such assets in a knowledge-based economy. To this end, the Centre has been engaged in a £2.8m initiative called IP Wales® (see www.ipwales.com). This is a joint business support and research initiative and has been recognised by the World Intellectual Property Organisation as a "world class" example of best practice in business support for small and medium sized enterprises.

The Centre is a member of the PatLib network of specialist IP resource centres across Europe. The IP Wales® model has been concerned with raising levels of awareness of IP issues amongst the SME community. This is vital in order to facilitate the protection of R&D activity and the initiatives have been concerned with advising SMEs on the commercialisation of their IP assets.

The research pursued in this Centre is multi-disciplinary, focusing upon economics and law. We have, for the first time, been able to benchmark IP activity in Wales. At the same time, the Centre has researched various models of the potential for IP as collateral to support debt finance.

The work of the Centre has fed into the deliberations of the UK Law Commission which, in its Consultation Paper No.164, considering the whole issue of registration of security interests in personal property.