Institute News

We plan to hold the Munich Summer Institute 2023 as an in-person event (no hybrid meeting) in Munich. The Munich Summer Institute will be preceded by the second MSI Ph.D. Workshop on 23 May 2023.

The Summer Institute will focus on three areas:

• Digitalization, Strategy and Organization
  (chairs: Tobias Kretschmer and Christian Peukert),
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship
  (chairs: Dietmar Harhoff, Joachim Henkel and Hanna Hottenrott), and
• Law & Economics of Intellectual Property, Innovation & Digitalization
  (chair: Stefan Bechtold and Imke Reimers).

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, 12 plenary presentations and a daily poster session (including a poster slam). The Munich Summer Institute focuses on quantitative empirical research.

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 Munich Summer Institute will fund hotel expenses for all plenary speakers, poster presenters and invited discussants. It is expected that participants fund their own travel. The Munich Summer Institute may provide limited travel scholarships in case of financial hardship.

Keynote Speakers

• Nigel Melville, University of Michigan
• Jana Gallus, University of California at Los Angeles
• David Schwartz, Northwestern University

Paper submission procedure

Researchers who would like to present a paper are invited to submit their paper online until 15 February 2023 at http://editorialexpress.com/conference/msi2023. The Munich Summer Institute only considers papers which have not been published or accepted for publication at the date of submission. Paper selections will be announced in mid-March 2023. The program of the Munich Summer Institute will be available in early April 2023. All accepted papers will be made available to all participants on 14 May 2023. Researchers who would like to attend the Munich Summer Institute without giving a presentation should contact one of the organizers by 15 April 2023. 

Further information

More information is available at the MSI website. Any questions concerning the Munich Summer Institute should be directed to Stefan Bechtold, Dietmar Harhoff, Joachim Henkel, Hanna Hottenrott, Tobias Kretschmer, Christian Peukert, or Imke Reimers.

On 23 November 2021, the 193 Member States at UNESCO’s General Conference adopted the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, which is the first global normative in the field responding directly to the need for clear, ethically informed guidelines on the design, development and use of AI systems. This very first global standard-setting instrument on the subject is to not only protect but also promote human rights and human dignity, and will be an ethical guiding compass and a global normative bedrock allowing to build strong respect for the rule of law in the digital world.

The international conference on the UNESCO Recommendation was organized by the Romanian Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitalization (MCID), together with UNESCO and two of the most prestigious Romanian Universities – West University of Timişoara (UVT) and Politehnica University of Bucharest (UPB) – and was held at the premises of Politehnica University of Bucharest in presence of Gabriela Ramos, Assistant Director-General for the Social and Human Sciences of UNESCO, and Sebastian-Ioan Burduja, Minister of Research, Innovation and Digitalization.

The event brought together a wide array of stakeholders from science, legal practice, policy, and civil society to discuss the UNESCO recommendation and its ability to serve as a global instrument for the ethical design, development and deployment of Al.

The conference centered around two main themes: the need to promote diversity and inclusiveness, and how to move from principles to practice to assess the ethical impact of AI on society.

Dietmar Harhoff was a keynote speaker and shared his professional vantage points to the first panel to discuss and explore issues such as the lack of diversity and inclusiveness in AI, algorithmic bias and discrimination, as well as possible measures to address these issues. However, he also pointed to the difficult trade-off between regulation and incentives for innovation.

Directly to the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence.

Data is at the heart of the ongoing digital transformation of the economy and society. In many different ways, access to data is becoming a precondition for innovating and for competing effectively. Against this background, both the European and the German legislator are striving to develop a legal framework for the data economy that facilitates voluntary agreements on data access and sharing and mandates data portability and/or data access where it is needed to protect – and sometimes to promote – competition.

The BMWK has asked the consortium consisting of lawyers and economists to determine whether the emerging legal framework is fit for the task of protecting and, where necessary, promoting competition, and to outline options for action in case of deficiencies. In fact, the inventory of the legal rules relating to data access and data sharing currently in place provides evidence of a great degree of legal uncertainty. Legal institutions, i.e. well-defined (intellectual) property rights, contract law principles and competition law principles, are only emerging. On the basis of this stocktaking exercise, the study discusses the need for reform and explores policy options. These relate to the European Commission’s proposal for a Data Act, European and German competition law including merger control, the Digital Markets Act and Section 19a GWB (German Act against Restraints of Competition), as well as the legal framework for data intermediaries.

The expert study is available at the following link:
Data access and sharing in Germany and in the EU: Towards a coherent legal framework for the emerging data economy

The workshop was originally launched in Turin, but is now also held at other major research locations such as the Centre for Research on Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Bath (2018), GREThA at the Université de Bordeaux-CNRS (2019), and KU Leuven (2022).

The organisers aim to attract contributions from both junior and senior scholars on topics related to the organisation, economics and policy of scientific research. A minimum number of slots are reserved for junior researchers (PhD students or postdoc scholars who obtained their PhD in 2020 or later).

Contributions are invited on (but not limited to) one or more of the following topics:

• Organisation of research activities in universities, PROs and private R&D labs
• The evaluation of science policy
• Science in the private sector and spillovers from scientific research
• Role of individual researcher characteristics in scientific research
• Science research networks and collaboration
• Scientific careers and mobility

Please submit previously unpublished papers or extended abstracts (min 3 pages) by 15 January 2023.
We strive to notify authors by 27 February 2023.

Download Call for Papers.

More information and submission of papers on the workshop website.

Scholars with a background or interest in Competition Law, Intellectual Property Law, Innovation Economics or Entrepreneurship Research should reach out to scienceforukraine(at)ip.mpg.de. This applies to doctoral students and established scientists alike.

Update from 4 May 2022

Since the publication of this information, numerous applications have been submitted. So far, eight scientists have been welcomed to the Institute. Two people are now conducting research in the department of Reto M. Hilty, and three each in the department of Josef Drexl and the department of Dietmar Harhoff. In addition to integration at the Institute, team members have helped with interpreting, finding a kindergarten place, organizing school places, and finding housing for the researchers and their relatives. In total, seven relatives, including five children, accompany the refugees. To strengthen contacts with and among the new colleagues, excursions were organized and the guests were even invited privately to an Easter brunch. All of this cannot make the cruel war in Ukraine forgotten, but hopefully it will make it a little easier for the newly arrived to settle into their new environment.

As a result of the cooperation between the Institute's SIPLA initiative and the Colombian Superintendencia de Industria y Comercio (Superintendence of Industry and Commerce), both partners expect that research results from collaboratively identified projects will help to define governmental measures in a targeted manner and to implement them more efficiently.

A similar partnership has already been established with Argentina, and further agreements of this kind in Latin American countries are to follow in the future.

About SIPLA
 

Smart IP for Latin America is a research initiative of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition. It provides a neutral forum for academic and legal policy discourse on intellectual property and competition law in Latin America. It aims to inform and advise academia, policymakers, the business sector and the public on the basis of impartial and evidence-based fundamental research. The goal is to support the realization of Latin America’s social, cultural, and economic potential.

Smart IP for Latin America was launched in 2018 at an inaugural conference in Santiago de Chile, attended by representatives from academia, government, industry, and legal practice. An office at the University of Buenos Aires – the “Observatory” – has been coordinating research activities and events on site in close cooperation with the SIPLA team at the Institute in Munich since 2019. The team is supported by a top-class advisory board with scientific representatives from all over Latin America.

Call For Unpublished Papers on the Licensing and Litigation of SEPs

The digital economy relies on information communication technology (ICT) standards to meet consumers’ demand for interoperability, connectivity and innovation. The diffusion of global standards such as 5G, Wi-Fi 6 and HEVC drives economic growth and prosperity by enabling the Internet of Things and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. However, as ICT standards become general-purpose technologies, tensions arise regarding licensing patents declared as essential for their implementation (i.e., standard-essential patents, SEPs).

Under the Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) licensing commitments before standard-development organisations (SDOs), SEP-holders seek remuneration from SEP implementers, which these latter sometimes resist. Against this background, the Florence Seminar on SEPs welcomes unpublished papers from lawyers and economists on the licensing and litigation of SEPs. The selected contributions will be discussed in-depth during the two-day Seminar, emphasising the societal impact of the research findings.

Suggested areas comprise:

• FRAND royalty rate calculation (e.g., transparency, entire-market value rule vs smallest saleable patent practising unit, how to set a FRAND royalty rate in new IoT verticals);
• Multi-party SEP licensing solutions (e.g., cross-licensing, patent pools, defensive patent aggregators and licensing-negotiation groups);
• Patent exhaustion and FRAND licensing across IoT verticals;
• SEP infringement and remedies;
• Jurisdictional issues of SEP disputes (e.g., applicable law, anti-suit injunctions, national judgments on global FRAND licenses);
• FRAND alternative dispute resolution mechanisms;
• Market definition and market power vis-à-vis SEPs;
• Unilateral and multilateral antitrust issues of SEP licensing and litigation.

Scientific committee:

• Marco Botta | EUI
• Ginevra Bruzzone | LUISS
• Beatriz Conde Gallego | Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
• Josef Drexl | Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
• Lapo Filistrucchi | EUI – University of Florence
• Igor Nikolic | EUI
• Pier Luigi Parcu | EUI
• Nicolas Petit | EUI
• Maria Alessandra Rossi | University of Chieti Pescara

Organising committee:

• Chiara Carrozza | EUI
• Niccolò Galli | EUI

Submission: Please submit extended abstracts or full papers by 31 May 2022. Acceptance notifications will be sent by mid-June 2022. Final paper versions of the selected submissions are due by  18 September 2022.

From 8 to 10 June 2022, the Center for Law & Economics at ETH Zurich, the Chair for Technology and Innovation Management at TUM, the Chair for Economics of Innovation 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 sixth Munich Summer Institute.

We plan to hold the Munich Summer Institute 2022 as an in-person event (no hybrid meeting) in Munich. If the Covid19 pandemic makes such physical meeting unfeasible, we will shift to an online event on the same days. This year, the Munich Summer Institute will be preceded by a doctoral workshop on 7 June.

The Summer Institute will focus on three areas:

• Digitalization, Strategy and Organization
  (chairs: Jörg Claussen and Tobias Kretschmer),
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship
  (chairs: Dietmar Harhoff, Joachim Henkel and Hanna Hottenrott), and
• Law & Economics of Intellectual Property, Innovation & Digitalization
  (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, 12 plenary presentations and a daily poster session (including a poster slam). The Munich Summer Institute focuses on quantitative empirical research. Participation in the Munich Summer Institute is by invitation only. 

Keynote speakers are:

• Hanna Halaburda, New York University
• Nicola Lacetera, University of Toronto
• Melissa Wasserman, University of Texas at Austin

Paper submission procedure

Researchers who would like to present a paper are invited to submit their paper online until 15 March 2022. The Munich Summer Institute only considers papers which have not been published or accepted for publication at the date of submission. Paper selections will be announced in mid-April 2022. The program of the Munich Summer Institute will be available in early May 2022. Final papers will be made available to conference participants on a public website, and are due on 15 May 2022. Researchers who would like to attend the Munich Summer Institute without giving a presentation should contact one of the organizers by 15 May 2022. 

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, Hanna Hottenrott or Tobias Kretschmer.

The workshop was first organized by Junior Researchers in 2018, and is aimed at Ph.D. students and Junior Postdocs worldwide. RISE offers them an opportunity to present their work, receive feedback from experienced researchers and connect with peers from other research institutions. Keynote Speaker of the RISE4 Workshop is Catherine Tucker, Professor of Management Science and Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan and Chair of the MIT Sloan PhD Program.

Get the program here (PDF).
More on the workshop website RISE4 Workshop.