Institute News

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

The Max Planck Society awards the prize, endowed with EUR 7,500, with the intention to motivate talented junior scientists and researchers to pursue a future research career.

Fabian Gaessler’s thesis is dedicated to the empirical study of the enforcement and trade of patent rights in Europe. The means available to an inventor to enforce his exclusive right against others and/or to sell his protected idea represent fundamental preconditions for a functioning patent system, and ultimately for incentivizing innovation. Fabian Gaessler uses quantitative methods to address inter alia the question as to what extent the current institutional design in Germany is conducive to patent enforcement and whether it qualifies as a blueprint for a European unified system.

Since 1978, the Max Planck Society honors up to 30 young scientists and researchers every year with the Otto Hahn Medal for outstanding scientific achievement - to date, more than 940 scientists and researchers.

The paper examines the impact and signaling effects of crowdfinancing on subsequent venture capital funding rounds. Drawing on a choice experimental research design the author finds causal evidence that crowdfunding – relative to other prefunding sources – is often a negative signal for professional venture investors, but that the “crowd” can nonetheless and under certain circumstances send positive signals increasing the likelihood of subsequent financing rounds.

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

The prize, endowed with 500 Euro, is granted by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology together with the Leuphana Research Center for Entrepreneurship.

The paper examines the impact and signaling effects of crowdfinancing on subsequent venture capital funding rounds. Drawing on a choice experimental research design the author finds causal evidence that crowdfunding – relative to other prefunding sources – is often interpreted as a negative signal by professional venture investors, but that the “crowd” can nonetheless and under certain circumstances send positive signals increasing the likelihood of subsequent financing rounds.

The purpose of the event, which was organized jointly with the Swedish innovation agency Vinnova and whose participants included 20 political and research experts from Germany, Austria, Sweden, Finland, The Netherlands and Great Britain, was to exchange views on current experience with the growing numbers of new initiatives in different countries on open and user innovation policy. One focal point of the workshop was new approaches in innovation policy, including how to involve individual users and households, as important sources of innovation, in innovation policy. A further meeting is planned for July 2017 in Innsbruck, Austria.

Professor Dietmar Harhoff, Director at the Max Planck Institute that hosted the event, summed up the results: „We discovered that we can learn a lot from each country’s experiences. The processes of innovation are changing rapidly. The group of those who are actively shaping innovation processes is becoming larger and more diverse. A central question, both for innovation research and for policymaking, is what drives this increasing complexity in innovation processes and how can we put its potential to good use. We will continue to pursue this topic avidly.“

The Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation (Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation - EFI) provides scientific advice to the German Federal Government and periodically delivers reports on research, innovation and technological productivity in Germany. A key task is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the German innovation system in an international comparison. Furthermore, Germany's perspectives as a location for research and innovation are evaluated on the basis of the latest research findings. EFI presents proposals for national research and innovation policy.

The Summer Institute 2017 will focus on three areas:

• Digitization, Strategy and Organization (chairs: Jörg Claussen and Tobias Kretschmer),
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship (chair: Dietmar Harhoff), 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 lecturers, 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. Partizipation 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.

Key speakers are:

• Michael Frakes (Duke University),
• Ajia Leiponen (Cornell University), and
• Mirjam van Praag (Copenhagen Business School).

Paper selections will be announced at the beginning of March. The program of the Munich Summer Institute will be available on April 1, 2017. Final papers are due for circulation among conference participants on May 1, 2017. Accepted papers will be made available to conference participants on a protected website. Researchers who would like to attend the Munich Summer Institute without giving a presentation should contact one of the organizers by May 1, 2017.

More information is available at http://munich-summer-institute.org. Any questions concerning the Munich Summer Institute should be directed to Stefan Bechtold, Jörg Claussen, Dietmar Harhoff or Tobias Kretschmer.

He succeeds Dietmar Harhoff, who held this position since 2015.

The prize is awarded annually under the auspices of the President of the Bundestag Norbert Lammert for the most important dissertation of the year in each of three areas: Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences and Technology. The prize recognizes excellent dissertations that are also of great current relevance to society.

In the absence of Norbert Lammert, legal scholar Dr. Fischmann was awarded the prize by Vice-President of the Bundestag Edelgard Bulmahn on 8 November 2016 at the Marie-Elisabeth Lüders Building in Berlin.