From patents and ball bearings to...reindeer?

I was looking forward to going to Valea since I saw the group present the company in class. I think it's interesting because it's a very unique type of business to be in and because my dad has a handful of patents. We met with Andrew Hammond, a patent attorney; he's worked in the IP (Intellectual Property) industry for 30 years. The company is an independent firm that has a staff of about 100 people and is located in five locations: Goteborg, Stockholm, Linkoping, Lund, and Malmo. Their services include establishing, defending, and commercializing IP assets such as patents, trademarks, and designs. In order to maximize the value of an invention and/or idea, putting a patent or trademark on it is very important. He gave us an example of a diaper and said that there could be up to 15 patents in a diaper! I learned that an invention can be a product or a method. And the reason we need patents is to prevent others from using the invention during a limited period of time and it forces competitors to come up with new solutions that don’t infringe on the patent. I found Andrew’s presentation to be very informative and interesting.

Afterwards, he took us to lunch at the cafeteria located in the business complex their office is located in. By the end of the meal, Alex (who was my piano instructor last semester and is a musical genius) was serenading the entire cafeteria with some classical piano tunes—everyone loved it!

Then, we went to SKF where they make ball bearings. We had a tour of the facility from Lars Werner. We watched a short video about the company to start out and then went through their showroom, which was very fun to see. One of the best parts was the demonstration of how their perfect precision is so accurate. They had platforms mounted on the wall and small metal balls would get bounced PERFECTLY onto each surface so they would just bounce across the wall and into the buckets. Lars mentioned that if even a fingerprint got on one of them, the metal ball would shoot into the air!

I learned that there are 47,000 employees worldwide and 1,250 of them work in Goteborg for SKF. I really enjoyed the next part of the tour, which was through the factory. We got to see ABB robots at work—they were amazing! The precision, accuracy, and speed of them was just phenomenal. They use so many robots in their facility because of how clean and precise the ball bearings need to be that one of the places in the production line only requires three people to work first through fifth shift.

Later on we went to Swedish Taste, which is a restaurant/cooking class instructed by world famous chefs. The place was absolutely beautiful—it was in a building that overlooked the opera house on the water.

Reindeer (sorry, Rudolph!)

Bone marrow with mushrooms and bacon

Mushroom soup

Reindeer and egg

I was a little intimidated to go because I’m not exactly the best chef; I’m more of a baker. But I gave it a shot and to my surprise it turned out amazingly!!! We were split up into four groups; I was with Sam, Tyler, and Quinn. Our group was assigned to do the soup. It was a mushroom cream soup along with bone marrow stuffed with mushrooms and bacon and topped with cheese. Our entire meal was prepared from scratch! The rest of the meal consisted of: reindeer and baked egg for an appetizer, reindeer with a cream sauce for the main course, and blueberry cake with homemade ice cream.

Making the stuffing for the bone marrow

Blueberry cake and ice cream

We all left the restaurant feeling very full, but everyone seemed to love all of the food. Then, the head chefs came out and announced a winner for the group who did the best—it was the group who made the reindeer main course. They did an amazing job because the meat was so tender and had such a great flavor!

Head chefs

The winning team #rudolph