Events

Abstract

This lecture will cover many of the topics most pressing in the world of Life Sciences transactions and disputes today, drawing on experience with German, European, Chinese as well as US legal developments. The intent of the lecture is to provide a practical look at the issues practitioners need to understand to provide advice in transactions, disputes and other decision-making for Life Sciences companies. The presenters will address, in particular: (1) current trends in co-development, co-promotion, regional and joint venture deals; (2) Intellectual Property developments, including second medical use issues and new developments in antibody patent protection in Europe and the US; (3) biosimilar trends and developments. The presenters will discuss general issues which interface with data privacy and GDPR, but will not separately focus on data privacy or data breach issues in this lecture.

Speaker Bios

Sarah Columbia (Partner, McDermott Will & Emery, Boston) is a US lawyer who focuses her practice on intellectual property disputes, including some of the most significant Life Sciences cases of the past 5 years. She has extensive experience representing clients in the courts in the US and coordinating disputes that reach into Europe and Asia. 

Dr. Rüdiger Herrmann (Partner, McDermott Will & Emery, Frankfurt) is a German qualified lawyer who focuses his practice on key transactions in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors. He has a wealth of experience advising national and international clients on mergers and acquisitions, licensing agreements, collaboration agreements, strategic alliances, initial public offerings, and private equity/venture capital transactions. He has a particularly strong background in dealing with life science matters in Europe, the US, China and Taiwan.

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room 313

I examine the impact of a funding shock caused by the 16-day long U.S. Federal Government shutdown in 2013 on scientific research. The timing of the government shutdown coincided with the beginning of the Arctic summer, which is the crucial albeit short period for researchers to set up their experiments and measurements in the Antarctic. This means that although the shutdown lasted for only slightly more than two weeks, its timing substantially magnified its effect on federally funded research in the Antarctic. I use information on specific research projects in the Antarctic funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that were critically affected by the shutdown: projects were either cancelled in their entirety, their start substantially delayed, often by at least an entire year, or they lost a substantial amount of data because no measurements could be taken during the year following the shutdown. My ability to identify specific projects and the individual scientists affected by the shutdown allows me to identify the causal impact of a large, exogenous funding shock on research outcomes and career trajectories of individual scientists.

Contact person: Dr. Fabian Gaessler

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Room E10

Program and information on the conference: Alumni Association of the Institute

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room E10

Peer Recommendations, Consumption Variety, and Product Performance: Evidence from a Digital Music Platform

Speakers: Johannes Loh (ISTO)

Approximating the Standard Essentiality of Patents – A Semantics-Based Analysis

Speaker: Lorenz Brachtendorf (Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition)

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Wettbewerb, Munich, Room 313

Multiple institutional affiliations occur when an academic belongs to more than one organisation. We document an increase in multiple institutional affiliations listed by authors on scientific publications based on an analysis of more than 2.5 million publications from OECD countries (plus selected countries such as China) during the 1996-2018 period. Furthermore, we find that the increase in the share of articles with multiple affiliations is more pronounced in countries that have implemented some form of Excellence Initiative (ExIn). Publication-author-level difference-in-differences analyses show that the probability of authors listing multiple affiliations after the implementation is between 1.3 (Japan) and 10 (France) percent higher than in countries without Excellence Initiatives. Evidence on roles and motivations behind these arrangements is mainly anecdotal. We argue that multiple affiliations may present a new model for competitive edge in the highly contested research market. Reporting results from an international survey on academics in three major science nations (the UK, Germany and Japan), we find that multiple affiliations are widespread across disciplines and are used to increase access to resources, networks or know-how. Junior academics also use them to increase job prospects and income, indicative of the precarious employment conditions they may find themselves in. Additional affiliations do not seem to be a source of conflict for mid-career and senior researchers, but junior researchers may face time and other work-related conflicts due to the additional commitment. The majority of additional affiliations build on personal contacts, but institutions also proactively shape the organisational links of their staff.

Contact person: Michael Rose, Ph.D.

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Room E10

In cooperation with the Münchner Kartellrechtsforum e.V. (www.kartellrechtsforum.de)

As usual, the Kartellrechtsforum e.V. then invites you to an informal exchange over drinks and snacks.

For better planning, please register with Mark-E. Orth (meo(at)meo-law.de) by 28.06.2019

The program of the Munich Summer Institute 2019 is now available.
Please see here.

From 17 to 19 June 2019, the Center for Law & Economics at ETH Zurich, the Chair for Technology and Innovation Management at TUM, the Institute for Strategy, Technology and Organization at LMU Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition will jointly organize the fourth Munich Summer Institute.

The Summer Institute will focus on three areas:

• Digitization, Strategy and Organization
  (chairs: Jörg Claussen and Tobias Kretschmer),
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship
  (chairs: Dietmar Harhoff and Joachim Henkel), and
• Law & Economics of Intellectual Property and Innovation
  (chair: Stefan Bechtold).

The goal of the Munich Summer Institute is to stimulate a rigorous in-depth discussion of a select number of research papers and to strengthen the interdisciplinary international research community in these areas. Researchers in economics, law, management and related fields at all stages of their career (from Ph.D. students to full professors) may attend the Munich Summer Institute as presenters in a plenary or a poster session, as discussants or as attendants. The Munich Summer Institute will feature three keynote lectures, 18 plenary presentations and a daily poster session (including a poster slam). Paper presentations will be grouped by topics, not discipline or method. The Munich Summer Institute will be held at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in the heart of Munich. Participation is by invitation only. The organizers will fund travel and hotel expenses for all plenary speakers and hotel expenses for all poster presenters and invited discussants.

Keynote speakers are:

• Alfonso Gambardella (Bocconi University)
• Robert Seamans (New York University)
• Catherine Tucker (Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Further information

More information is available at the MSI website. Any questions concerning the Munich Summer Institute should be directed to Stefan Bechtold, Jörg Claussen, Dietmar Harhoff, Joachim Henkel or Tobias Kretschmer.

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Room E10

Moderation: Ansgar Glatt

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Munich, Room 313

I use newly-collected, georeferenced network panel data to study how an exogenous increase in the efficiency of exchanging knowledge affected follow-on innovation. Specifically, I examine how the introduction of inexpensive, distance-independent postage via the British Penny Postage Act of 1839 influenced the formation of links within a network of prominent British scientists. Link formation is citation-based and hence indicative of cumulative innovation. I use two-period extensions of the network formation model proposed by Graham (2017, ECMA) to identify the impact of the reform. I can distinguish between a postage reduction effect and a quality improvement effect. The model allows me to control for fixed effects for the citing and cited scientists and to take into account the existence of previous links, the efficiency of transportation, and the proximity of scientists' research areas. The model is estimated with Graham's (2017) tetrad logit estimator. (This project is work in progress.)

Contact person: Michael Rose

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition

In the United States, the judicial system relies upon legally specialized judges to promote uniformity and certainty. Judges who serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“Federal Circuit”), as well as some district court judges, develop legal expertise from hearing a high volume of patent cases.

However, although a few judges possess scientific backgrounds, technical expertise is generally lacking. This forces judges to heavily rely on party-hired experts, and may contribute to the high claim construction reversal rate. By contrast, several European patent courts utilize technically-qualified judges. These judges may lack law degrees, but work side-by-side with legally-trained judges to decide patent cases.

Sapna Kumar examines the role of technical expertise in patent litigation, and discusses limitations on courts using independent or party-hired experts. She looks at the use of technically-qualified judges in the German and Swiss federal patent court systems, as well as in the proposed Unified Patent Court, and discusses advantages and disadvantages to their use. She finally considers how greater technical expertise could be integrated into the U.S. system, such as through the use of technically-trained magistrate judges.