The first issuing of the Inventor’s Prize awarded on the Inventors' Day 2006 goes to the "inventor" of the free internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia.

(Berlin) The task of the jury was not easy: An inventor should be found. One that would be worthy to receive a new prize for the first time and one that had created something useful for innumerable people.

Although awarded at almost the same time and contrary to the Nobel prizes, the annual Erfinder prize is intended to honour practical ideas. Things that find application in every day life instead of in the laboratory.

"We have collected as it were inventions the whole year through and checked them against with our criteria. There were fantastic inventions among them, but only after considering the meaning of invention = to deviate from a patent brought us on the right path", explained jury member Marijan Jordan.

The decision of the jury draws particular attention to the differences between those of Wales' implementation and how earlier inventors had acted.

This then means: "where other inventors have assumed that a patent secures all possible rights for them and will lead to success, Wales proved that new technologies such as the internet require new ways of thinking for the realisation of ideas. Free content instead of patent." The entire jury decision is available at www.inventors-day.com.

Thus the initiators of the Inventors' Day with the Hedy Lamarr as their representative inventor have made an unusual choice for the winner of first Erfinder prize. The reason for the decision lies according to initiator Gerhard Muthenthaler of the Patentmarketingagentur www.en.erfinder.at in the new generation inventors that are increasingly more likely to be computer programmers than engineers. "Other inventors can learn from these new ways of thinking."