Award  |  11/02/2022

Timmy Pielmeier receives the GRUR Dissertation Prize

Timmy Pielmeier has been awarded the GRUR Dissertation Prize in the category of Trademark, Competition and Design Law for his dissertation on  Die Konkurrenz von Urheberrecht und Lauterkeitsrecht im Binnenmarkt (The Relationship of Copyright and Fair Trading Law in the Internal Market). The awardee wrote a significant part of his work during his time as a scholarship holder at the Institute.

Dr. Gert Würtenberger (GRUR) with Dr. Timmy Pielmeier
Dr. Gert Würtenberger, President of GRUR with Dr. Timmy Pielmeier. Photo: Andreas Burkhardt/GRUR
Dr. Gert Würtenberger, President of GRUR with Dr. Timmy Pielmeier. Photo: Andreas Burkhardt/GRUR
Dr. Gert Würtenberger, President of GRUR with Dr. Timmy Pielmeier. Photo: Andreas Burkhardt/GRUR
Award of the GRUR Dissertation Prize. Photo: Andreas Burkhardt/GRUR
Award of the GRUR Dissertation Prize. Photo: Andreas Burkhardt/GRUR

In his thesis, Pielmeier examines the tense relationship between and the delimitation of Copyright Law and the Law of Unfair Competition in the European internal market. The aim of the work is to create a uniformity of valuation or harmony between copyright law and fair dealing law. Thus, cases that are equal in terms of valuation are to be treated equally within a uniform and consistent legal order, a legal system; conversely, cases that are different in terms of valuation are to be treated differently according to their differences. In specific cases, contradictions in legal valuations must be identified and resolved within the limits of permissible application of the law, in accordance with this philosophical foundation of value jurisprudence. The last part of the thesis anticipates the potential for conflict in individual cases and examines the collision relationship by applying the developed collision tool with a view to concrete clusters of cases.


Timmy Pielmeier received his doctorate from LMU Munich under Prof. Dr. Ansgar Ohly, LL.M. (Cambridge). He currently works as a research fellow with Prof. Dr. Dr. Mark-Oliver Mackenrodt, LL.M. (NYU), Professorship of Law of Digital Goods, Commerce and Competition at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).


With the GRUR Dissertation Award, the Association honors up to four particularly outstanding dissertations in the fields of Patent and Utility Model Law, Copyright and Media Law, Trademark, Competition and Design Law, and Data and Information Law. The prize is endowed with € 2,500 each and was presented by the President of GRUR, Dr. Gert Würtenberger, on 7 October 2022, during the annual conference of the German Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (GRUR) in Dresden.


The thesis will be published next year by Mohr Siebeck under the title "Urheberrecht und Lauterkeitsrecht - Die Konkurrenz zweier Regelungskomplexe im Binnenmarkt".