The Institute

Since its founding 60 years ago, the Institute has been committed to the development of intellectual property law and competition law on the basis of sound scientific principles. Through its wide range of contributions to research, it has initiated and provided guidance for important legislative processes on the national, the European and the international level.

With the addition in 2013 of the economics department Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research, the Institute took account of the fact that legal aspects are not the only factors determining the regulation of these processes. Rather, economic considerations represent an important, complementary set of instruments to measure the effects of legal norms. Conversely, economists also increasingly use insights from the field of law to make more realistic models of the processes and institutions they study and to examine them empirically. Using such complementary approaches in research allows for a better assessment of particularly those new phenomena that generate ever more interest in the worlds of business, politics and civil society.

In 2024, the Net Zero Lab was established – an independent Max Planck research group focused on innovations in climate technology, corporate decarbonization, and carbon markets.

In fact, the Institute’s research topics are not only receiving increasing attention in scientific discussions, but are also influencing political and social discourse. A number of factors contribute to this, such as the rapid advance of digitalization and the opening up of creative and innovation processes.

The Institute’s expanded methodological spectrum enables us to adapt to the new status quo in science, technology, business, politics, and society. This is all the more important as the call for science to provide evidence-based political advice has grown louder in recent years: Data-based analyses are called upon to clarify causal relationships and display correlations that are generated by a variety of effects.

A further central task of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition is the promotion of young scientists beyond their university degree. Our unique infrastructure and support programs attract over 100 young scholars each year from all over the world, most in their doctoral phase, to the Institute to prepare for an academic career. We also host a great many guest scholars, who use our library, the best worldwide in its fields, in pursuit of their studies and research projects.

An important and above all practical function is fulfilled by the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center (MIPLC). Here the Institute offers an English-language LL.M. program with an emphasis in IP law within an international network of partner universities and featuring a teaching staff of world-renowned professors.