Institute News

In order to bundle existing competencies in science, industry and society, build a tight and synergistic network, and make it internationally visible, a Bavarian AI Agency is being established at the Leibniz Supercomputing Center of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

The AI agency will link research activities around artificial intelligence, machine learning and automation across the state. To promote AI and large-scale strategic projects, the agency will forge partnerships among research institutions as well as with companies and organizations. Through the resulting network, innovative smart applications and technologies from the scientific environment will be made available for general use. Another important objective of the AI agency is the scouting of specialists in this field. For the implementation of these strategic goals, the AI Agency cooperates closely with the AI Council.

The Bavarian AI Council, which provides expert advice and also represents the network externally, reflects a balanced spectrum of representatives with different research backgrounds from Bavarian universities, universities of applied sciences, and non-university research institutions as well as from the industry. The 21 Bavarian-based members of the AI Council were appointed by the Ministries of Science, Economic Affairs, and Digital Affairs. The inaugural meeting of the Council took place on 22 December 2020.
 

New Technologies and Projects for AI made in Bavaria

The Bavarian AI Council is chaired by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sami Haddadin, Director of the Munich School of Robotics and Machine Intelligence, and Chair of Robotics and Systems Intelligence at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

He emphasizes: “The human being at the center of AI must be more than a leitmotif: It must be our guiding principle for action. AI, used as a tool, should help make our lives better. I am committed to ensuring that, starting from internationally visible cutting-edge research, AI technologies emerge for the benefit of people and society ‒ be it in medicine, the work environment, or mobility. This is especially true when it comes to using AI to tackle the global challenges of our time: demographic change and climate change.”

Co-chairs are Prof. Dr. Dr. Fabian Theis from Helmholtz Zentrum München, representing non-university research, and Thomas Hahn, Chief Expert Software at Siemens AG and President of the Big Data Value Association (BDVA), representing the industry.
 

Important Impulses for a Targeted Policy

The Bavarian AI Council is also set to provide important impetus to policymakers in the further strategic development of AI activities in Bavaria. Prof. Dietmar Harhoff, Ph.D., Director at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, points out: “Artificial intelligence is one of the pivotal technologies for the future. AI research and AI applications can be further strengthened through wise measures ‒ for the benefit of the public. The AI Council can play a central role in developing courses of action for a targeted AI policy.”

The establishment of the Bavarian AI Agency and the AI Council complements the Bavarian AI strategy of the HighTech Agenda Bavaria and the accelerator program HighTech Agenda Plus.

For many people in the digital age it has become a matter of course to be able to use applications such as weather apps, digital city maps or interactive maps of infection spread at any time. These offers are based on data provided by the public sector. Public sector information is thus omnipresent in everyday life – often unnoticed by the users themselves. For the stability and the prosperity of an open information society, it is crucial that this information is in principle accessible to everyone. This raises the question of how rules should be designed to achieve the best possible use of public sector information.

Heiko Richter pursues this question in his dissertation entitled “Information as Infrastructure – Towards a Competition- and Innovation-Oriented Framework for Public Sector Information”. In this context, he brings together the public law regulations on the access to and dissemination of information, EU competition law and intellectual property law in a comprehensive infrastructure approach. Based on this approach, specific regulatory frameworks for public sector information can be further developed in a competition- and innovation-oriented manner. The study thus creates a new level of knowledge and reflection on the role of information for the economy, society and state.

Finally, the dissertation provides concrete recommendations for action on how the EU and its member states can adapt existing law in order to create and secure the functional conditions of a liberal society in the midst of the digital transformation. The study thus bridges the gap between legal-interdisciplinary fundamental research and the setting of rules. Accordingly, its results are just as relevant for academics in the applicable fields of law, as they are for decision-makers in legal policy.

With the Humboldt Prize, the Humboldt University of Berlin annually honors outstanding scientific work at university level at the opening of the academic year. So far, jurisprudential studies have been awarded the Prize relatively rarely. The dissertation will be published in 2021 by Mohr Siebeck Verlag.

All winners of the Humboldt Prize 2020 can be found here.

On 17 June 2020, 14 founding members (Australia, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States of America) launched the "Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI)”. GPAI was jointly initiated and conceived by Canada and France during their G7 presidencies (2018, 2019).

GPAI seeks to enhance the responsible implementation of AI in the spirit of human rights, democratic values, inclusion and diversity, while promoting innovation and economic growth as well as the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

GPAI establishes a global multi-stakeholder forum that brings together experts from research, politics, the economy and civil society to promote research and make recommendations for political decision-makers. GPAI conducts its activities in the framework of working groups established for the following topics:
 

• Responsible AI
• Data Governance
• The Future of Work
• Innovation and Commercialization

Moreover, it was decided to establish another ad hoc working group dealing with the use of AI to overcome the current COVID-19 pandemic.

First results of the Data Governance group

Josef Drexl, Managing Director of the Institute, was appointed by the Federal Republic of Germany as an expert for the Data Governance Working Group. This group has the mandate to contribute with its research and recommendations to the goal that the collection, use, sharing, archiving and deletion of data is in accordance with GPAI's stated objectives.

Having started its activities immediately after the launch of GPAI, the Data Governance Working Group has already drafted a “GPAI Data Governance Framework” as a basis for its future work and mandated an independent research institution to prepare a report on the “Role of Data in AI”. As a next step, three sub-groups will address the technical, institutional and legal dimensions of data governance.

To provide administrative support to GPAI, a Secretariat has been established at OECD in Paris. The activities of the working groups are coordinated by two newly created Centres of Expertise in Paris and Montreal. The Centre for Expertise for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in Montreal coordinates the activities of the Data Governance Working Group.

In July 2019, the founding commission chaired by Dietmar Harhoff had issued recommendations for the new Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation (SPRIND). Based on these recommendations, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy have appointed the software entrepreneur and open source pioneer Rafael Laguna de la Vera founding director of the new Agency. The SprinD GmbH was founded on 16 December 2019, with headquarters in Leipzig. Sole shareholder is the Federal Republic of Germany, represented by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.

The Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation is closing a gap in the German innovation landscape. SPRIND identifies new, groundbreaking technologies for the major challenges of our time and ensures at the same time that the added value of emerging companies and industries remains in Germany and Europe.

On 22 September, the Supervisory Board of the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation was inaugurated. The board consists of up to ten members who both represent the Federal Government as 100% shareholder and bring expertise from science and industry to the board.

The Members of the Supervisory Board are:

• Yasmin Fahimi, German Bundestag
• Prof. Dietmar Harhoff, Ph.D., Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
• Dr.-Ing. E. h. Peter Leibinger, TRUMPF GmbH + Co. KG (Chair of the Supervisory Board)
• Dr. Kristina Klas, Federal Ministry of Finance
• Susanne Klatten, SKion GmbH
• Ronja Kemmer (designated), German Bundestag
• Prof. Dr. Wolf-Dieter Lukas, Federal Ministry of Education and Research
• Dr. Ulrich Nußbaum, Federal Ministry for Economic Affaits and Energy
• Maximilian Viessmann, Viessmann Werke GmbH & Co. KG
• Prof. Dr. Birgitta Wolff, Goethe University Frankfurt (Vice Chair of the Supervisory Board)

Chair of the Supervisory Board is Dr. Ing. E. h. Peter Leibinger, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Vice Chairman of the TRUMPF Group Management Board. He emphasizes, “In Germany, the cooperation between fundamental research, applied science and innovative companies should be expanded. We will be able to tap the full potential of our country if our research leads to marketable products, new jobs, and an international competitive edge in new industries. The Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation can make an effective contribution to this.”

Vice Chair of the Supervisory Board is the President of the Goethe University Frankfurt, Prof. Dr. Birgitta Wolff. She explains, “We spend more than three percent of our gross national product on research and development, which puts us at the top in Europe. With SPRIND, we want to build a solid bridge from science to industry – a meeting place for outstanding minds in our country who not only want to think up the future, but also want to help shape it as researchers and entrepreneurs.”

At the inaugural meeting in Leipzig, the Supervisory Board has already made the decision to found a first project company, which is to drive a radical innovation in the generation of wind energy. The ground-mounted generator of the “Bendix wind turbine” can take full advantage of stronger winds without overloading the generator, which currently limits the performance of conventional wind turbines. “This is not only highly innovative from a technical point of view, but also economically gratifying”, says Raffael Laguna de la Vera.

Further innovation projects are currently in the validation phase. So far, almost 300 project proposals have been submitted and are being reviewed by a committee of experts.

More information:

Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation (SPRIND)

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.

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.

The three Institute researchers received the award for their publication “Sui Generis Geographical Indications for the Protection of Non-Agricultural Products in the EU: Can the Quality Schemes Fulfil the Task?”, which was published in the International Review of Intellectual Property and Competition Law (IIC) at the beginning of the year. The paper analyses the suitability of the extension of the EU quality schemes – Protected Designations of Origin (PDOs) and Protected Geographical Indications (PGIs) – to the protection of non-agricultural products.

For their research the authors built upon a previously unpublished dataset and applied a mixed comparative and empirical methodology. From their research findings they derive recommendations for action that the EU legislature should take into consideration in case of an extension of the EU sui generis GI regime to non-agricultural products.

The European Communities Trade Mark Association (ECTA), founded in 1980, is the oldest European association whose more than 1,500 members are experts, academics and professionals in the fields of trademarks, geographical indications, and other areas of IP Law. The ECTA Award is given as a recognition of top-level research which is deemed of considerable importance for the advancement of European trademark and design law, copyright law or geographical indications law.

The complete publication can be found here