Josef Drexl, Niccolò Galli, Vicente Zafrilla Diaz-Marta and Letizia Tomada participated in the online conference "Fostering Innovation in Europe - Intellectual Property Policies and Law“ of EIPIN Innovation Society and EUIPO
Event Report  |  07/22/2020

“Fostering Innovation in Europe”: Virtual Scientific Exchange for Early Stage Researchers

At the online conference “Fostering Innovation in Europe - Intellectual Property Policies and Law“ 14 Early Stage Researchers of the European Joint Doctorate project of the EIPIN Innovation Society had the opportunity to share their research results.

Josef Drexl, Niccolò Galli, Vicente Zafrilla Diaz-Marta and Letizia Tomada participated in the online conference "Fostering Innovation in Europe - Intellectual Property Policies and Law“ of EIPIN Innovation Society and EUIPO
The online conference "Fostering Innovation in Europe" gave 14 Early Stage Researchers the opportunity to share their research results. Photo: EIPIN/EUIPO

Notwithstanding the difficulties brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, the European Joint Doctorate project of the EIPIN (European Intellectual Property Institutes Network) Innovation Society remains committed to pursuing its main objective: supporting high-quality doctoral research on the role of intellectual property (IP) as a complex adaptive system in innovation. At the online conference “Fostering Innovation in Europe - Intellectual Property Policies and Law” on 25 June all 14 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) who are currently finalising their doctoral theses had the opportunity to present their research outcomes. In organising the event, EIPIN built on the active support of the Partner Organisation European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) in Alicante. The Office also acted as the official host of the conference.


As the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition is a supporting institution of the EIPIN Innovation Society project, four representatives of the Institute actively took part in the event. Professor Josef Drexl, Managing Director at the Institute, moderated the Panel “Intellectual Property as a Complex Adaptive System” (Panel 1). Together with the ESRs, he discussed the relationship between IP rights and innovation stressing the tension between IP reward and access as the true innovation driver even in the foremost technological fields such as Artificial Intelligence. Furthermore, the three ESRs Niccolò Galli, Vicente Zafrilla Diaz-Marta and Letizia Tomada, whose doctoral theses are primarily supervised within the Institute, presented their research results during the conference.


The research results at a glance


During Panel 1 Niccolò Galli highlighted his research findings on the interplay between patent aggregation, innovation and EU competition law. Abandoning pejorative monikers such as patent trolling, he advocated for a conduct-based redefinition of patent aggregation as the building of ICT patent portfolios for subsequent non-manufacturing use. Based on such a redefinition he advanced an analytical framework to assess the possible innovation effects of patent aggregation activities within competition law analysis.


During the Panel “Governance of Production and Technologies” (Panel 2), Vicente Zafrilla Diaz-Marta focused his presentation on a very specific – and workable – proposal to prevent over- and underdisclosure of standard essential patents (SEPs) in the framework of standard developing organisations. His proposal builds on the aims of the disclosure system – primarily to ensure access of new market participants and secondarily to inform implementers for licencing purposes. It balances the incentives and dynamics that might encourage SEP holders to an under- or overdeclare SEPs or dissuade them from engaging in such behaviour.


During the Panel “Adjudication, Justice and Enforcement” (Panel 3), Letizia Tomada presented a part of her research findings concerning the implications of the establishment of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) for innovation of start-ups. She analysed certain UPC features that tend to favour strong established businesses over more financially constrained start-ups. The discussion focused on the lack of proximity to the litigation venue and the territorial scope of jurisdiction. Lastly, her presentation envisaged changes to the UPC Agreement to mitigate the existing imbalances.


Further information on the doctoral programme is available at the EIPIN-Innovation Society website.


This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no 721 733.

14th Workshop on the Organisation, Economics and Policy of Scientific Research
Event Report  |  07/13/2020

14th Workshop on the Organisation, Economics and Policy of Scientific Research – Two Days of Lively Scientific Exchange in the Virtual Space

On 9 and 10 July 2020, the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition hosted the annual workshop “The Organisation, Economics and Policy of Scientific Research” jointly organized with the Technical University of Munich and the BRICK/Collegio Carlo Alberto, Turin.

14th Workshop on the Organisation, Economics and Policy of Scientific Research

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) and the GREThA at the Université de Bordeaux-CNRS (2019).


Due to the current pandemic situation, the event, which was initially planned for the end of April, now took place very successfully in online format for the first time. The participants were welcomed by Michael E. Rose, Senior Research Fellow in the department Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research, and co-organizer Hanna Hottenrott, Professor of Economics of Innovation at the Technical University of Munich.


The 12 presentations in six sessions over two days were very well received by up to 70 participants. The afternoon sessions were particularly well attended, since, due to the time difference, researchers from the US were also able to zoom in. In addition to the presentations, virtual breakout rooms were hosted which allowed the researchers to make new contacts with other scientists for the first time in a long while.


The topics at a glance


The first session started by focusing on the question "How Scientists Search". The presenter showed how the search for antibodies can be biased by the ranking of search results. The second presentation discussed how novelty and impact of scientific articles in physics are related to team size.


The second session dealt with topics in the field of academic training. In Session 3, the first day of the workshop concluded with investigations on how scientists react to the sudden loss of research resources.


The second day opened with two presentations on questions of informal cooperation in economics. Session 5 focused on science funding: Both theoretical and empirical research findings on the optimal design of science funding programs were presented.


In the final workshop session, the presenters stressed, on the one hand, the importance of coherence and alignment with one’s previous research in order to obtain funding, as well as, on the other hand, that humor and curiosity are more important as drivers of path-breaking science than research awards.


See the complete program with all topics here.


More information on the workshop website and further impressions on Twitter under #woepsr2020.


We thank all organizing parties involved as well as all participants, speakers and discussants for a truly exceptional and inspiring workshop and look forward to WOEPSR 2021. The Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition will host the workshop again within the next two years and hopes to welcome the participants on site then.

Francis Fay (European Commission DG Agri) speaks during the GI-Workshop at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
Event Report  |  04/03/2020

GI-Workshop - Two Days in the Sign of Geographical Indications

Since many effects of the protection of Geographical Indications have not been sufficiently researched, the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition last year founded a research group to analyze the GI system within the EU and beyond. The researchers organized a workshop to present their preliminary research findings and to exchange views with international experts.

Francis Fay (European Commission DG Agri) speaks during the GI-Workshop at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
Francis Fay from the European Commission explains the EU policy on GIs during the Workshop

Geographical Indications (GIs) are designations for products from a geographical area that owe their quality or reputation to their geographical origin. In the European Union, they are protected as Intellectual Property rights by an independent legal system. Since they are also an instrument of agricultural policy to promote production and living conditions in rural areas, there are many differences with other fields of IP rights. Specificities also arise from the fact that the first and often most important phase of the granting of rights takes place before national authorities, whereby national traditions and idiosyncrasies could impair the desired uniformity of protection.


Since there has been little legal research on GIs - despite increased attention to the subject from politics and the economy - the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition launched a research project at the beginning of last year to analyze the GI system within the EU and beyond. On 13 and 14 February, the Institute hosted a workshop on GIs in which international experts from academia and practice, as well as representatives of authorities from the EU and some member states, took part. During the workshop, the Institute's researchers were able to present their preliminary research results and discuss with the participants.


Geographical Indications in the EU


To start the workshop, project coordinator Andrea Zappalaglio explained the aims and structure of the project; he presented the results of the evaluation and empirical analysis of the protection parameters summarized in the specifications for GIs registered in the EU database DOOR (Database of Origin & Registration). In this database, managed by the EU Commission, all registered agricultural products and foodstuffs are published.


Afterwards, representatives of the EU Commission provided insights into the work and plans of the new Commission. Francis Fay, head of the unit responsible for GIs in the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DG Agri), and Valerie Dufour from DG Agri explained the Commission's current audit practice and the EU policy on GIs and discussed with the participants the challenges and options for optimizing the system. Marie D'Avigneau and Malwina Mejer from the Directorate-General for the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG Grow) reported on the status of work on creating protection of GIs for non-agricultural products.


On the second day of the workshop, the Max Planck research team first presented the preliminary results of a comparative analysis of the national procedures under which GI applications are examined in the member states. Alexander von Mühlendahl, lawyer at the Munich law firm Bardehle Pagenberg and Visiting Professor at Queen Mary University in London, and Elisa Zaera Cuadrado from the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) then explained the relationship between trademarks and GIs in EU law and the examination practice of the EUIPO. Pilar Montero from the University of Alicante spoke about the scope of protection of GIs, which has developed from EU law and the case law of the European Court of Justice.
 

GIs from an international perspective


In the morning’s second session, the workshop focused on the international perspective. Roxana Blasetti from the University of Buenos Aires, who is a Visiting Scientist at the Institute, presented the negotiated solution for the mutual protection of GIs of the contracting parties in the Free Trade Agreement between the EU and the Mercosur countries.


Subsequently, Max Planck researchers Suelen Carls and Pedro Batista gave an overview of the Institute's project "Smart IP for Latin America" and explained the research activities related to the component of the project devoted to examining the protection of GIs in selected Latin American countries. In the final talk, Alexandra Grazioli, Director of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), spoke about opportunities and challenges for the Lisbon Agreement on Appellations of Origin and Geographical Indications administered by WIPO following the entry into force of the Geneva Act on 26 February 2020.


The workshop ended with an intensive discussion in the afternoon of the second day, moderated by Max Planck researcher Annette Kur. The valuable feedback from the participants gave the Institute's research group important impulses for their further work. After the empirical analysis of the GIs registered in the EU, the project will focus on the functioning of the national authorities involved in the protection system and on the cooperation between them, the applicants and the EU Commission. Based on these empirical findings, an analysis of selected legal questions will follow.

10th Amendment to the GWB: Thorsten Käseberg speaks at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
Event Report  |  02/20/2020

10th Amendment to the GWB: New Instruments for a Competition Policy in the Digital Age

The 10th amendment to the GWB (German Competition Act), which is called “GWB Digitization Act”, seeks to adapt the German competition law to the requirements of the modern platform economy. In a presentation at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition co-organized by the Münchner Kartellrechtsforum, Thorsten Käseberg, Head of the Department for Competition and Consumer Policy at the Federal Ministry of Economics, outlined and discussed the first draft bill.

10th Amendment to the GWB: Thorsten Käseberg speaks at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
Thorsten Käseberg speaks at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition about the 10th Amendment to the German Competition Act. Photo: Ulrike Garlet

The power of digital platforms does not only pose new challenges for consumers and small businesses, but also for competition authorities. The extent to which competition policy needs new instruments to counteract tendencies of power concentration in the platform economy has for long been at the center of an ongoing debate. The planned 10th amendment to the Act against Restraints of Competition (GWB), now intends to provide the Bundeskartellamt with additional instruments enabling the authority to act more effectively with regard to digital companies who possess market power. The aim of the law is to create a “digital regulatory framework”.
 

On the occasion of the official publication of the draft bill, Thorsten Käseberg, Head of the Department of Competition and Consumer Policy at the Federal Ministry of Economics, presented an overview of the planned new provisions of the "GWB Digitization Act" at an event at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition co-organized by the Münchner Kartellrechtsforum e.V.
 

The centerpiece of the draft bill is the modernization of the rules on abusive conduct by companies who possess outstanding market power. "You can say that the wind has turned significantly with regard to this concern”, said Käseberg at the beginning of his lecture, summarizing the general sentiment both in society and in many competition authorities worldwide. An increasing number of observers have indicated that with the traditional rules the authorities would hardly be able to effectively control certain unilateral strategies of dominant companies in the digital sector.
 

The amendment addresses the increasing importance of data by introducing "access to competition-relevant data" as an additional factor for assessing the market position of a company (Section 18 (3) GWB, new version). In addition, in the new Section 18 (3b), the concept of "intermediary power" as a factor for determining a dominant market position has been introduced to the law. This provision intends to better capture the role of platforms as intermediaries in multilateral markets.
 

By expanding the "Essential Facilities Doctrine" the GWB amendment takes the importance of data for digital business models into account. "We have tried to open up and internationalize the provision which previously only referred to physical infrastructures”, said Käseberg. If a dominant company refuses to grant another company access to data, this behavior can be classified as abusive under certain conditions according to the new Section 19 (2) No. 4. "Even if we cannot finally solve the issue of data governance, we want to create an instrument for cases of clear abuse.”
 

According to Käseberg's assessment, the new Section 19a is expected to be highly controversial. This provision addresses platforms who dispose of an outstanding market power across several markets. With regard to such companies the Bundeskartellamt would be able to establish that they belong to this category and to subsequently interdict certain strategies of such platforms. This includes self-preferencing, leveraging of market power and impeding data portability.
 

The German rules on abusive conduct apply already below the market power threshold in the case of relative market power or dependency. According to the planned revision of Section 20 (1) the application of these rules will in the future not any more be limited to cases where small and medium enterprises are possible plaintiffs.
 

In addition to the reform of abuse control, the 10th amendment to the GWB will adapt the thresholds for merger control and create more legal security for cooperation between companies. The amendment also implements the ECN+ Directive, which aims to strengthen the competition authorities in the EU Member States.

Event Report  |  01/10/2020

RISE2 Workshop 2019 – Two Days of Intense Scientific Exchange for Young Scholars

On 16 and 17 December 2019, 50 international young researchers from over 20 universities across Europe and the US attended the 2nd Research in Innovation, Science and Entrepreneurship Workshop (RISE2).

Photo: Myriam Rion

For the second time now, the two-day event was organized by Ph.D. students and Postdocs of the Department for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research headed by Dietmar Harhoff to give young scholars the opportunity to present and discuss their work.


This year’s attendants experienced two workshop days filled with an exciting program comprising 14 paper presentations on the Economics of Innovation, Science and Entrepreneurship based on various methodological approaches, which were followed by 14 discussions from experienced researchers. A special highlight of the event was the inspiring keynote speech by Pierre Azoulay, Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.


On the first day, the workshop focused on topics related to the determinants of scientific productivity. Speakers presented research findings on how scientists select interesting research questions and potential collaborators as well as on the relevance of access to funding and research tools. The afternoon was dedicated to the role of gender in science, especially to analyzing peer effects and the importance of female role models. To conclude the day, keynote speaker Pierre Azoulay presented interesting research results on “The Impact of Scientific Training on Today’s Trainers”. He emphasized the role of training in nurturing scientific talents and the importance of building programs that incentivize them to remain active in science.


The morning of the second day offered interesting insights on innovation and entrepreneurship. Young scholars presented research on the geographic diffusion of knowledge as well as on the transfer of scientific knowledge into commercial applications. They shed light on the circumstances under which universities and individual researchers foster the innovation outcomes of their communities. In the afternoon, the workshop focused on the design and effects of intellectual property rights regimes. Researchers simulated the consequences of changes in the current European patent system. Additionally, they provided evidence on the effects of patents on start-ups as well as on the pricing behavior of firms.


See the complete program with all topics here and check out on Twitter under #RISE2Workshop.


The RISE workshop series aims at stimulating a rigorous in-depth discussion of a selected number of research papers by Ph.D. students and Junior Postdocs, providing feedback and connecting with peers from other research institutions. Accordingly, the workshop brings together young researchers from all over Europe and the US with researchers from the Munich Innovation Community.


We thank all organizing parties involved and all participants, including the keynote speaker, discussants and presenters for a truly outstanding RISE2 Workshop 2019. With great enthusiasm and motivation, we look forward to the RISE3 Workshop 2020.

Consumer Rights Days at the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection
Event Report  |  01/10/2020

Data Access, Consumer Interests and Public Interest Grounds

At the Consumer Rights Days (Verbraucherrechtstage) 2019, which were taken care of in scientific regards by the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, representatives from scholarship and politics discussed how access to data in the digital era should ideally be regulated.

Consumer Rights Days at the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection
At the Consumer Rights Days the participants discussed the topic "Data Access, Consumer Interests and Public Interest Grounds". Photo: BMJV

Data are the engine of the digital transformation. They are at the center of new business models, they feed the development of artificial intelligence and enable innovation.


In the digital era undertakings, consumers and the state depend on access to data controlled by others in many contexts. The need and justification for new data access rules, as well as the question of how they should be designed, not only present new challenges for political decision-makers – both at national and EU level – but have recently also gained more attention in legal scholarship.


It was therefore the aim of the Consumer Rights Days 2019 to bring together representatives from scholarship and politics to discuss the future of data access regimes. The Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, under the leadership of its Director Josef Drexl, was in charge of organizing the academic side of the two-day conference hosted at the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection. Through presentations, keynotes and a panel discussion, participants considered how access to data in the digital era should be designed to promote innovation and competition while ensuring that privacy interests and trade secrets are adequately protected. The event highlighted the issue of data access not only from the perspective of competition policy but also with a particular focus on public interest grounds and consumer interests.


The keynote on the first day of the conference was given by Professor Christiane Wendehorst. As Co-Speaker for the Federal Government's Data Ethics Commission, she explained the most important results of the Commission's work. In the keynote on the second day, Malte Beyer-Katzenberger from the European Commission provided an idea of what kind of initiatives to promote access to data are to be expected from the Commission. Representing the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Professor Josef Drexl spoke on the potential introduction of data access claims of users regarding data generated by smart products. Jörg Hoffmann evaluated the potential of existing and future sector-specific access claims of competitors, and Heiko Richter discussed rules enabling the state to access private sector data based on public interest grounds.


The contributions to the conference are expected to be published in an edited volume before the end of 2020. Not least, the potential political impact of the conference has to be assessed against the backdrop that Germany will take over the Presidency of the Council of the EU in the second half of 2020. There is no doubt about the significance the goal of enhanced data access now has for the German government. "We are committed to improving access to data, and with the Consumer Rights Days public interest grounds and consumer interests move to the center of the debate. Yet, it will remain essential that the protection of the rights of every individual is equally guaranteed ", said State Secretary Gerd Billen at the close of the conference.


Find a detailed Summary of the Conumer Rights Days (in German) here.
 

Annual session of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in the Munich Residence
Event Report  |  12/19/2019

Markets, Society and the Law in Times of Digital Change

In his academic lecture at the annual festive session of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Josef Drexl addressed the question of whether the existing legal framework is still able to regulate new digital business models appropriately.

Annual session of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in the Munich Residence
Annual session of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in the Munich Residence. Photo: BAdW
Josef Drexl during his academic lecture at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences
Josef Drexl during his academic lecture. Photo: BAdW

When the Bavarian Academy of Sciences convenes its members and selected guests for its annual session in the pre-Christmas season, this event traditionally takes on a very solemn character. In the exclusive setting of the Hercules Hall in the Munich Residence, the proceedings do not only revolve around the 260-year history of the non-university research institution. With the quantum technology research of the Leibniz Computing Center, the Walther Meißner Institute for Low Temperature Research as part of Bavaria's high-tech agenda, and the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt), founded in 2018, the Academy is also playing a leading role on topics that matter for the future. "The academy looks back on a venerable history and at the same time pursues research on major issues concerning the future", the Bavarian Science Minister Bernd Sibler summarized this year in his welcoming address to the members of the Academy and the invited guests.


This December, the academic lecture - traditionally one of the highlights of the agenda - was dedicated to digital transformation. Professor Josef Drexl, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition and a member of the Academy since 2010, spoke about the legal challenges arising from data-driven business models.


Digitization is not only fundamentally changing the economy and society. New technological developments also present challenges to existing law. "The liberal and democratic society faces the major task of regaining its own values in the face of technological, economic and social change to rethink and reorganize the relationship between the state, the economy and citizens", Josef Drexl set as a basic thesis in the center of his talk. 


Against the backdrop of three examples – the protests against the recent EU copyright reform, the discussion about the introduction of data ownership and the challenges competition law is confronted with in the digital sector – he showed that the existing instruments of market regulation are often no longer suitable to solve the modern problems of the digital economy without taking into account the fundamental rights of citizens, in particular the right to data protection.


In his lecture, the Director at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition also made clear that currently all countries in the world have to make a decision on the status of their citizens' fundamental rights, not least with regard to the functioning of democracy in the future. In this context, he clearly rejected the one-dimensional characterization of data protection as an obstacle to digital innovation that would impair Europe’s competitiveness especially in comparison to the USA and China.  "It would be wrong to see the protection of personal data as a one-sided obstacle to innovation. It sets the standards how to deal with data in the digital age. At the same time, it creates the necessary incentives for digital innovations that are needed to make data protection technically possible”, said Josef Drexl in the Munich Residence.


The complete academic lecture can be found here


You can listen to the lecture in the podcast

Event Report  |  06/24/2019

Munich Summer Institute 2019 − Three Days of Inspiring Scientific Exchange

3 renowned keynote speakers, 19 varied paper presentations, 27 contributions to poster slams, and 114 attendants from over 50 universities and research institutions from the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia and all over Europe: A recap in numbers on the 4th MSI from 17 to 19 June 2019.

Photo: Alexander Suyer

For the fourth time in a row, the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities opened its time-honored doors for the Munich Summer Institute (MSI) from 17 to 19 June 2019. A total of 114 attendants experienced three days with an interesting interdisciplinary program comprising 19 paper presentations and discussions as well as an overall number of 27 contributions to the poster slams. Additionally, each conference day also entailed a keynote speech embedded in the research theme of the respective event day.


On day one, organized by the Institute for Strategy, Technology and Organization and centered around innovation-related topics on strategy, digitization and organization, Robert Seamans (NYU Stern) refreshingly discussed the impact of artificial intelligence on labor.


Event day two was organized by the Center for Law & Economics of ETH Zurich and offered interesting insights into patent law and copyright-related research in innovation management, including an intriguing keynote speech by Catherine Tucker (MIT Sloan) on Algorithmic Bias.


Co-organized by the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition and the Chair for Technology and Innovation Management of TUM, day three of the conference focused on the subject of entrepreneurship & innovation as well as on regulatory aspects and the financing of innovation, with keynote speaker Alfonso Gambardella (Bocconi) discussing a scientific approach to entrepreneurial decision-making.


Find the complete program with all topics here.


Since its beginning back in 2016, the MSI aims to facilitate networking within the research community, to foster the international exchange of ideas and to inspire for new projects. Accordingly, the conference is set up as a joint project organized by the Center for Law & Economics of ETH Zurich (Stefan Bechtold), the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition (Dietmar Harhoff), the Chair for Technology and Innovation Management of TUM (Joachim Henkel) and the Institute for Strategy, Technology and Organization of LMU (Jörg Claussen and Tobias Kretschmer).


We thank all organizing parties involved including the speakers, discussants and attendants for a truly outstanding MSI conference 2019 and we look forward to next years’ Munich Summer Institute 2020, which will take place from 2 to 4 June 2020.

Event Report  |  07/07/2017

Workshop "Internet of Things (IoT) Connectivity Standards"

On April 25, 2017, the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition held the workshop "IoT Connectivity Standards" at its venues in Munich. The workshop was the first of a series in the context of the research project "Standards for the Internet of Things".

With the workshop series the Institute seeks, first, to discuss with experts and practitioners in which direction the Internet of Things will develop with regard to standardization, and second, to identify the economic and regulatory implications of those changes.


The workshop focused on connectivity standards enabling interoperability between multiple devices and across different communication networks. It consisted of three distinct panels:

  • Technology and Market Landscape: The objective of this panel was to get insights from indus-try representatives on the evolving landscape of current and future technologies providing machine to machine communication as well as on how the IoT is changing the business and market environment, both in general and with regard to the IoT connectivity market.
  • Standardization Landscape: Representatives of different standard setting organizations, industry consortia and technology companies explained the current stage of standardization activities in the field of IoT connectivity. Beyond this mapping exercise, more fundamental questions were addressed, such as how technology and market complexity affect the standardization process and what are the optimal roles of standard setting organizations, industry allianc-es and stakeholder groups in the IoT standard development.
  • IPRs Landscape: IP lawyers from different stakeholders presented their views on the role that Intellectual Property Rights will play in the IoT context and, more specifically, on the challenges that the increased need for connectivity and interoperability creates with regard to access to patented standardized technology.

The presentations and discussions at the workshop provided useful insights for the assessment and analysis of the economic, legal and regulatory implications of standardization in the field of IoT con-nectivity. Among them, the event’s organizers, Dr. Beatriz Conde Gallego and Dr. Fabian Gaessler of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, highlighted that “the need for wide common standards is less pronounced at the connectivity level than at higher levels (e.g. semantic interoperability), mainly because no single connectivity technology will be able to satisfy all industry needs. Various connectivity standards will coexist and complement each other in the future. At the same time, a successful implementation of these standards will certainly require transparent, predictable and flexible licensing schemes which reflect the heterogeneous conditions of IoT applications and the diversity of stakeholders involved in the IoT value chain.”


See Program

Event Report  |  05/14/2017

Workshop “European Intellectual Property Rights and Jurisdiction in Need of a Grand Design?”

From March 16 to 18, 2017, the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition organized the workshop “European Intellectual Property Rights and Jurisdiction in Need of a Grand Design?” at the Harnackhaus in Berlin.

The workshop focused on four areas:

  • Legal Aspects: Union-wide IP Rights plus Copyrights: The Status Quo including the Role of the ECJ (chair: Matthias Leistner); Patents: The Status Quo including EPO and UPC and the Role of the ECJ (chair: Axel Metzger),
  • Empirical Insights (chair: Annette Kur): EU Trade Mark Infringement Litigation; Patent Litigation,
  • Deficits and Perspectives in the Jurisdiction of IP Rights (chair: Paul Torremans), and
  • Conclusions: In Need of a Grand Design? (chair: Reto Hilty).

The purpose of the event with 40 experts from Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Denmark, Poland, Austria, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the United States, was to identify deficits and research perspectives for further developing the EU jurisdiction scheme.


The event's organizers, Roland Knaak and Roberto Romandini of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, summed up the results: “EU jurisdiction varies widely in its approach to the intellectual property rights. Union-wide jurisdiction is only provided under certain circumstances. For the existing unitary IP Rights, especially trademarks and designs, the Regulations on these rights transfer jurisdiction to the national courts of the Member States, which in certain cases have Union-wide competence. The remaining problems with a Union-wide enforcement of these rights could be mitigated, and possibly overcome, by including further substantive provisions in the Regulations. For European patents with or without unitary effect, the UPC model aiming at establishing Union-wide jurisdiction has been put into question by Great Britain’s impending exit from the EU. Much is still uncertain, and some legal questions concerning the UK´s UPCA membership can only be clearly resolved by the CJEU. As regards copyright law, different models for further developing jurisdiction are conceivable. The options range from shifting the competence to interpret EU copyright provisions from the CJEU to the General Court and limiting the CJEU´s function to questions of primary law, to the establishment of a unitary copyright and EU specialized courts in the sense of the TFEU. A uniform and overarching structure of jurisdiction for all European IP rights is not emerging. It will be the task of fundamental research to work on a model that is capable of consensus.”


See Program