Veranstaltungen

Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb, München, Raum 313

Research and product or process development are two distinct, yet complementary innovation activities. Making use of a specific grant-based policy design that explicitly distinguishes between research projects, development projects, and mixed R&D projects, this study estimates the direct and cross scheme effects on both research and development investments of recipient firms. Positive cross scheme effects can be expected when research and development activities are complementary and financing constraints are more binding for research than for development projects. The results show that while research grants yield positive direct effects on net research spending as well as positive cross effects on development, development grants are less effective for stimulating development expenditures. The positive effect of development grants on overall R&D stems from cross effects of development grants on research expenditures. These results suggest a higher priority for subsidies targeting research projects.

Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb, München, Raum 313

A probabilistic patent, that is, a patent with significant invalidation possibility, can significantly hamper the innovation enhancing role of a patent system. It may allow a patentee-licensor to command a disproportionately strong power over licensees. A probabilistic patent may also fail to effectively promote the investment by a patentee-manufacturer for developing the invention. A third party may be able to substantially contribute to reducing the problems of probabilistic patent through information submissions and post-grant oppositions.

This study examines such possibilities based on Japanese experiences which have extensively used an information submission system. More specifically we ask the following three questions.

(1) Which patent application is more likely to be challenged by information submissions?

(2) How effective are such challenges?

(3) How do third party contributions affect the quality of patent examination?

Ansprechpartner: Dr. Fabian Gaessler

Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb, München, Raum 313

Can authorities foster entrepreneurship by means of education and training? If so, what type of education or training is most beneficial? We investigate a large government-initiated reform to provide entrepreneurship education and training for university students and examine the program’s effects on entrepreneurial self-efficacy, entrepreneurial intentions, and new venture creation. While results suggest a positive effect of limited training interventions (workshops, inspirational lectures, and the like) on each of these three outcomes, no similar effect can be discerned for the program’s more all-encompassing university courses. We interpret these results to mean that less may be more when it comes to government-sponsored entrepreneurship education: small interventions can be as beneficial, if not more, as large interventions, when it comes to promoting entrepreneurial efficacy, entrepreneurial intentions and venture creation. Implications for theory, education, and policy are discussed. (Co-Autoren: Niklas Elert und Karolin Sjö)

Ansprechpartner: Dr. Laura Rosendahl Huber

Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb, München, Raum E10

Abstract
In the course of the ongoing shift in the online market from ownership to access-based models, platform services that provide access to content uploaded by their users play a major role in online content distribution. However, legal uncertainty regarding the liability of such platform services affects both rights holders, in their ability to negotiate appropriate remunerations, and content provider services, in their competition with platform services for users and revenues. Legal proceedings against platform services have not yet led to a sufficient clarification of the legal situation.

It remains unclear to which extent platform services engage in acts of communication to the public and making available and whether they can benefit from the liability exemption for hosts provided for in the E-Commerce Directive. On 14th September 2016 the EU Commission presented a proposal for a directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market taking up the current “transfer of value”-discussion, especially with the provisions in Article 13 and recital 38.

Against this background and irrespective of different legal positions on the issue of whether platform services are responsible for the licensing of musical works GEMA and YouTube recently signed an agreement enabling GEMA members to participate in the exploitation of their works and ending the legal proceedings between the parties.

About the author
Tobias Holzmüller, born 1975, studied history and law at the Universities of Glasgow, Montpellier, Heidelberg and New York (NYU, LL.M. 2007). He holds a PhD from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich and served as a research scholar at the Max-Planck-Institute for Intellectual Property law and Competition from 2004 to 2006. After being admitted as lawyer in 2007 he worked for the law firm Gleiss Lutz until 2012 in their Munich and Brussels offices. In this time Tobias focused on German and European antitrust law, copyright law and EU law.

Tobias joined GEMA in January 2013 as Director for Legal Affairs & General Counsel. Since 2016 he is also in charge of the German Society for Private Copying Collections in Germany (ZPÜ). He is a member of the Association of German Antitrust Lawyers and the German Society for Intellectual Property Rights (GRUR). He has published extensively on various topics of competition and copyright law and teaches Copyright Law at the University of Regensburg.

Referenten: Fabian Gaessler/Zhaoxin Pu
Taking the Crowd by the Hand - The Intermediary Role of Crowdfunding Platforms

Referent: Matthias Schmitt
Does A Local Bias Exist in Equity Crowdfunding?

Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb, München, Raum 313

This paper seeks to investigate to what extent European patent litigation has been harmonized across the Member States of the European Patent Convention. We introduce a divergent expectation model for patent infringement disputes, where both litigation and settlement are driven by patent quality, a function of both broadness and definiteness of the patent, with the technology-specific factor determining the relative weights. Under our model, patent holders and patent infringers decide whether to settle or litigate based on differences in perception of the patent's quality whereas at the trial stage it is the assessment of the absolute patent quality by the judge which decides the outcome of the case. We evaluate 1117 patent infringement and counterclaim decisions rendered by courts in the three largest patent-granting European countries - Germany, France, and the United Kingdom - between 2008 and 2012 to empirically test the hypotheses flowing from our model at the trial stage. Our preliminary findings point to significant differences in patent litigation outcomes by technology, industry, and jurisdiction. We particularly find evidence that patent litigation is technology-specific within and between countries. We seek to explain our results through an assessment of the value-specific patterns of the patent conflicts and thereby, find that the patent quality proxy we use significantly predicts the litigation outcome. (Authors: Raphael Zingg/Erasmus Elsner)

Ansprechpartner: Dr. Fabian Gaessler

Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb, München, Raum E10

Product positioning decisions are important strategic decisions managers make. Will the firm develop "high-end" products, priced above the average product in the marketplace or "low-end" products, priced lower than the average product in the market? We theorize and empricially investigate a high-end bias: the tendency to favor high-end over low-end projects in the absence of objective reasons for doing so. We conducted experimental investigations of managers' explicit versus implicit preferences for high- versus low-end. The core of these experimental studies is the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which analyzes the relative association strength between two constructs in the participant's mind. We find that (1) decision makers implicitly, and without objective justification, prefer high-end over low-end innovation projects, (2) decision maker's implicit high-end bias affects their explicit decisions, and (3) firms introduce more high-end than low-end innovations despite no advantage in revenue.

Ansprechpartner: Dr. Fabian Gaessler

Abstract

Kernpunkte des seit Ende 2009 von beiden Patentstreitkammern des Landgerichts München I praktizierten Münchner Verfahrens zur Stärkung des Patentstandortes München sind die Durchführung zweier Verhandlungstermine in der Sache und ein strenges Fristenregime. Ziel ist es, Patentinhabern in einem fairen und transparenten Verfahren schnellen und effektiven Rechtsschutz bereitzustellen.

Der Referent wird diesen Ansatz sowie dessen praktische Durchführung daraufhin untersuchen, ob sie dem Anspruch beider Parteien auf ein faires Verfahren gerecht werden.

Im Anschluss wird er die im Einvernehmen mit dem neuen Vorsitzenden der 21. Zivilkammer, Tobias Pichlmaier, neu gefassten „Hinweise zum Münchner Verfahren“ vorstellen und erläutern.

Dr. Matthias Zigann ist Vorsitzender Richter am Landgericht München I. Er leitet dort seit Dezember 2012 die 7. Zivilkammer (Patentstreitkammer). Nach seiner Promotion am Max-Planck-Institut für Innovation und Wettbewerb zum Thema „Entscheidungen inländischer Gerichte über ausländische gewerbliche Schutzrechte und Urheberrechte“ war er vier Jahre lang Staatsanwalt in Landshut, im Anschluss sechs Jahre lang Mitglied der 7. Zivilkammer des Landgerichts München I und zuletzt drei Jahre lang abgeordnet als wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter an den X. Zivilsenat (Patentsenat) des Bundesgerichtshofs in Karlsruhe.

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