Institute News

On December 14 Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Joseph Straus will celebrate his 80th birthday. He has for decades been one of the world's leading and most respected research personalities in intellectual property law with a clear focus on patent law.

After completing his law studies at the University of Ljubljana in 1962, Joseph Straus moved to Munich. As the first doctoral candidate of Friedrich-Karl Beier, he obtained his doctorate in 1968 at the University of Munich with a dissertation on competition law in Yugoslavia. In 1977, Joseph Straus took over the Yugoslavia Department at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Patent, Copyright and Competition Law under its director Friedrich-Karl Beier. After his habilitation at the University of Ljubljana in 1986, Joseph Straus was appointed titular professor there in the field of intellectual property law. At the beginning of the 1990s, Joseph Joseph Straus also taught at the Law Faculty of the University of Munich, where, to this day, as an honorary professor, he continues to supervise a large number of doctoral students.

Joseph Straus earned his worldwide reputation as a legal scholar first and foremost through his intensive research on forward-looking topics, primarily in patent law, at the Max Planck Institute. In 2001 he was appointed Director of the Institute - where he joined the sitting Director Gerhard Schricker.

In managing the newly established Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law in 2003 and 2004, he was not only responsible for repositioning the Institute to meet new challenges. He also took on the demanding responsibility of establishing the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center (MIPLC), with its internationally leading Master's Degree program in intellectual property law. In close cooperation with the University of Augsburg, the Technical University of Munich and the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., Joseph Straus led the MIPLC until his official retirement from the Institute in 2008. The success of this one-year degree course in its first 15 years, and the program's enormous international appeal, are due not only to a worldwide network of over 300 alumni but also in large part to the enthusiasm and strategic skills of its founder, Joseph Straus.

Retiring to a contemplative, private life is not in the nature of Joseph Straus. He continues to publish widely and is still a highly requested speaker at conferences all over the world. Among his many foreign research and teaching positions, consultancies in international organizations and activities in scientific organizations and societies, those deserving particular mention include his visiting professorships at Cornell Law School (1989 to 1998), the University of Toronto (2005), George Washington University in Washington, D.C. (2001 to present) and Tsinghua University in Shanghai (2015 to 2017) and his appointment to a research professorship (2011 to 2016) at the University of South Africa (UNISA).

Joseph Straus is a corresponding member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (since 1995) and a member of the Academia Europea (since 2001). In addition, Joseph Straus was co-editor of GRUR Int. and President of the International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property (ATRIP) (1993 to 1995), longtime Vice President and member of the GRUR Executive Committee, and finally chair of the AIPPI Program Committee and chair of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO). His scientific advice has been requested by the OECD, WIPO, UNCTAD, the European Patent Office, the German Ministry of Justice and the Legal Service of the German Bundestag, as well as by the European Commission as a member of the Expert Group on Biotechnological Inventions.

The award of the Science Prize of the Stifterverband der Deutschen Wissenschaft in the year 2000 stands out among his scientific honors. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by both the University of Ljubljana (2001) and the University of Kragujevac (2003). He was also honored by the University of Xiamen, Huangzhong University for Science and Technology (HUST) in Wuhan, and Tongji University in Shanghai as Honorary Professor. Joseph Straus is a bearer of the Grand Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2005) and of the Slovenian Order of Merit (2010).

The Institute honoured its former director with a special event in the patent law lecture series followed by a reception on December 18. The evening’s speakers were close and long-term companions of the honoree.  Prof. Dr. Rudolf Kraßer, Dr. Rainer Moufang, Prof. Dr. Bojan Pretnar and Wolrad Prinz zu Waldeck und Pyrmont spoke on particularly important topics of intellectual property law that are still a part of Joseph Straus’ research work today.

Updated 12/19/2018

On Wednesday, 14 November 2018, Laura Rosendahl Huber, Ph.D. and Laura Bechthold have presented their research results in a keynote speech at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.

Within the so-called “Gründerwoche Deutschland” (Startup Week Germany) the Day of Female Role Model Entrepreneurs was dedicated to the over 140 women entrepreneurs who voluntarily support an initiative of the Ministry and act as role models in schools, universities, or at public events to foster female entrepreneurship.

Rosendahl Huber and Bechthold have examined how exposure to female entrepreneurial role models influences the development of entrepreneurial self-efficacy, attitudes and intentions among female students. Drawing on a field experiment and social learning theory as well as existing research concerning role model effects, the study provides evidence that role model effects do not only occur by chance, but can be purposefully triggered in an educational setting. Hence, exploiting female role model effects may serve as an effective mechanism to foster female entrepreneurship.

In August 2018, the study has also received the Best Empirical Paper Award during the Entrepreneurship Division Business Meeting of the Academy of Management in Chicago.

With more than 288,000 printed books and over 10,000 e-books the library at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition and the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance is one of the world’s leading specialist libraries.

In an interview Peter Weber explains what a modern library in the age of e-paper, open access and MetaGer should be like - now and in the future.

Library Day is celebrated in Germany on October 24th. You can find more information and posts at #meandmylibrary and #TagderBibliotheken.

On Thursday, 6 September 2018, Felix Pöge received the EPIP Best Paper Award for Young Researchers for the paper “A Firm Scientific Community”. The prize is bestowed with 500 Euros and was conferred upon him during the EPIP 2018 Conference at the ESMT Berlin. Felix Pöge is Doctoral Student and Junior Research Fellow at the department Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research.
 

The paper investigates the extent to which firms participate in scientific communities’ activities and whether this facilitates the exchange and transfer of scientific knowledge to firms’ technological activities. The focus is on two modes of interactions of firms with scientific communities: the participation in and the sponsorship of international scientific conferences. In particular, the focus is on the field of computer science. The paper is joint work with Dr. Stefano Baruffaldi, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute.
 

First, the results document that both conference participation and sponsorship by firms is frequent and concentrated at events of the highest quality. Even within individual conferences, firm contributions stand out in quality. Second, firms are significantly more likely to cite in their scientific articles and patents scientific articles presented at a conference which they attended relative to articles presented at comparable conferences.
 

To provide causal evidence, the authors use the fact that academic researchers are more likely to attend conferences whose locations they can access easier by airplane. Thus, at a conference, firms have a higher likelihood to observe research by researchers with a direct flight to that conference.
 

EPIP (European Policy for Intellectual Property) is an international, independent, interdisciplinary, non-profit association of researchers with the objective to be a leading European platform for the analysis and discussion of intellectual property systems and intangible assets. EPIP encourages research regarding economic, legal, managerial, social, political and historical aspects of intellectual property rights at national, European and international levels. It contributes ideas, concepts and discussions that will promote innovation, productivity and growth in Europe and beyond and informs and encourages policy-oriented discussion involving political and administrative bodies and stakeholders in Europe. EPIP cooperates with other associations with similar objectives.

On 13 August 2018, Laurie Ciaramella received the AoM Best Dissertation Award Finalists for her thesis “Trade and Relocation of Intellectual Property: Essays on the Markets for Patents” during the Technology and Innovation Management Division Meeting of the Academy of Management in Chicago.

For her thesis, Laurie Ciaramella uses in-depth empirical analysis to explore understudied aspects of the markets for patents, on which firms exchange intangible assets that provide them with a temporary monopoly right on a technology. The main approach is an empirical microeconomic analysis, which is complemented using insights from economic theory, understanding of the law and tax subtleties of the patent system, and knowledge regarding the management of Intellectual Property assets by firms.

The thesis contributes to the understanding of the markets for patents, by highlighting novel motives for their use, by emphasizing firms’ strategies regarding the management of their Intellectual Property assets, and by providing original evidence on the scope and dynamics of these markets, as well as on unexplored sources for their malfunctioning.

Laurie Ciaramella graduated at MINES ParisTech. Her thesis was supervised by Yann Ménière and Catalina Martinez. Since December 2017, Laurie Ciaramella is Senior Research Fellow at the department Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research.

On 13 August 2018, Laura Rosendahl Huber, Ph.D., and Laura Bechthold received the Best Empirical Paper Award for their paper “Yes, I Can! –A Field Experiment on Female Role Model Effects in Entrepreneurship” during the Entrepreneurship Division Business Meeting of the Academy of Management in Chicago.

The paper examines how exposure to female entrepreneurial role models influences the development of entrepreneurial self-efficacy, attitudes and intentions among female students. Drawing on a field experiment and social learning theory as well as existing research concerning role model effects, the study provides evidence that role model effects do not only occur by chance, but can be purposefully triggered in an educational setting. Hence, exploiting female role model effects may serve as an effective mechanism to foster female entrepreneurship.

The prize, endowed with USD 1,500, is sponsored by the Kennesaw State University.

Participating institutions in the establishment of the BIT are: the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, the TU Munich, LMU Munich, the Bavarian School of Public Policy, the Akademie für Politische Bildung (Scholarship - Education - Public Services), the ISF (Institute for Social Science Research), the JMU (Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg), the FAU (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), and the University of Passau. The network is continuously being expanded with new innovative research partners.

The Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition has worked for several years with the predecessor institution, the MCIR, and cooperated in two interdisciplinary projects:

The Use of Copyright-Protected Creative Online Content by German Consumers
Internet-Based Technologies and Digital Business Models

Dietmar Harhoff, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, is a member of the founding board of directors of the MCIR.
 

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.

Press release

The annual event was initiated by Prof. Dr. Lars Klöhn, Humboldt University Berlin, and Prof. Dr. Lars Hornuf, University of Bremen. It was first organized in February 2013 at the Ludwig Maximilians University (LMU) Munich.

Since April 2016, Prof. Dr. Lars Hornuf is Affiliated Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition within the scope of the research project "Crowdinvesting in Germany, England and the USA: Regulatory Perspectives and Welfare Implications of a New Financing Scheme" which is funded by the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).

The symposium offers academics and practitioners a platform to exchange ideas about the latest developments in this field as well as for networking. Moreover, it is a forum for the information of legislators on the European and national level on a scientific basis and with regard to new legislative proposals or legal reform projects. For this purposes, each year a priority topic is defined which covers current issues of crowdinvesting from an economic and legal perspective. The findings of the symposia are published in high-ranking scientific journals.

See Program