IPcopy is pleased to announce that Keltie has opened its first office outside the UK, in the Irish city of Galway. By doing so, Keltie has not just cemented its place in the European Union but has joined the innovation community of one of the world’s most energetic cities.

To celebrate the opening of Keltie’s new office, IPcopy thought it would be appropriate to highlight a few facts about Galway.

• Galway, the ‘City of Tribes’, is a fast-growing city on the West Coast of Ireland beside the Atlantic Ocean. It’s the fourth-largest city in the Republic of Ireland after Dublin, Cork and Limerick. It also lends its name to a county, which is the second-largest on the island of Ireland.

• The area around Galway City is a thriving technology hub and one of the world’s principal centres for medical device technology. The area also has a burgeoning IT sector and strength in life sciences, marine engineering, renewable energy, agriculture, fisheries and food. All are technical fields in which Keltie has long-standing expertise.

• Salthill on the outskirts of Galway City is regarded as the mid-point of the Wild Atlantic Way. This touring route extends along the entire West Coast of Ireland. At over 2500km, it’s the world’s longest continuous coastal drive.

• Galway City is renowned for its friendliness, its vibrant lifestyle and its many festivals. A stroll down Shop Street to High Street and Quay Street involves weaving around numerous buskers, who compete with music spilling out from most of the bars.

• County Galway is a stronghold of the Irish language and other traditional culture, including music, poetry, song and dance. Most signs are bilingual. But everyone speaks English. Often very quickly.

• In Irish, Galway is Gaillimh. Which is pronounced rather like gaal-yiv. No, we don’t understand how, either…

• The River Corrib bisects the city and is among the shortest rivers in the world, with a length of just 6km from Lough Corrib to the Atlantic. But as the Lough is the largest in the Republic of Ireland – and as the West can be a touch, erm, damp from time to time – the Corrib is reputedly the fastest-flowing river in any European city.

• It’s said in the West that if you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes. Four seasons in one day? More like one hour!

• Galway City has a population of roughly 80,000, a quarter of whom are students – most at the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG) and the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT). The population swells further with thousands of tourists who visit the city and the scenic Connemara region nearby.

• It’s perfectly acceptable, indeed widely encouraged, to spend time with a hooker in Galway. A Galway hooker is a traditional local sailing boat that was used mainly to transport turf (a.k.a. peat, as fuel for heating and cooking) and other items across Galway Bay. Many hookers still sail for leisure purposes.

• Connemara in County Galway is a wilderness of mountains, lakes and bogs but it hosted two great technological firsts in the early 20th Century: Marconi’s transatlantic radio broadcasts in 1901; and Alcock & Brown’s transatlantic flight in 1919 – which ended beside Marconi’s radio station outside Clifden.

• Galway City will be European Capital of Culture in 2020.

Keltie’s expansion into Ireland is being led by Keltie partner Sean Cummings, who’s from a local family and has lived in the scenic Connemara region of County Galway for some years. Sean, and Keltie, look forward to representing clients and associates directly before the Irish Patents Office in addition to continuing our representation before the EUIPO, the EPO and the UKIPO.

10 November 2016