Institute News

On February 25, 2015, the Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation chaired by Prof. Dietmar Harhoff, Ph.D., Director at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation, has presented the eighth report on research, innovation and technological performance in Germany to the German chancellor Angela Merkel. 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.

Martin Husovec, a scholarship holder and an IMPRS-CI doctoral candidate at the Munich-based Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, has been named Affiliate Scholar at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet & Society (CIS) for 2014-2016. Within his affiliation project, Martin Husovec will work on acquainting a broader audience with his doctoral research on the optimal accountability of Internet intermediaries for third-party wrongdoing in the field of intellectual property law. More »

Henri de Belsunce, former scholarship holder at the Munich-based Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, was awarded the "Brenno Galli Award" at the "SIDE (Italian Society of Law and Economics) 2014 Rome Conference" in December 2014 for his paper "Do more patents mean less entry? Patenting strategies in cumulative innovation under the threat of litigation".

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As of January 1st, 2015, Dietmar Harhoff, Director at the Max-Planck-Institute for Innovation and Competition and head of the economics department "Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research", takes over the management of the Institute through biennial rotation, succeeding Josef Drexl who held this position since 2013.

Senior Research Fellow and Head of Unit at the Munich-based Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Annette Kur, was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki (Finnland),, "for her major contributions to European intellectual property law, especially within the fields of trade mark and design law" at the end of November.

The honorary doctorate is conferred every five years on persons who "based on scientific, cultural or social activities of great merit can be considered worthy of this distinction". Together with a group of experts at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Kur has greatly influenced industrial design legislation in the European Union, for instance by co-writing the report on the "Overall Evaluation of the Functioning of the European Trade Mark System", which has formed the basis of the pending Commission proposal for the reform of European trade mark law.

Alongside Kur, Edward Freeman, Professor at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business (USA), and Oz Shy, PhD, Senior Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (USA), were awarded the honorary doctorate for their academic achievements.

Hanken School of Economics, founded in 1909, is a leading, internationally accredited (Equis and AMBA) university in the field of economics and business administration. It is one of the oldest business schools in the Nordic countries and maintains close and intensive links with the business world. At its two campuses in Helsinki and Vaasa it offers academic programs on all levels (BSc, MSc and PhD).

Magdalena Streicher, doctoral candidate with exploratory focus on "Entrepreneurship" at the Munich-based Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition since October 2014, was awarded the Appreciation Prize from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy for her excellent achievements in the framework of her master studies in "International Management / CEMS" at the Vienna University of Economics and Business at the end of November.

The prize, endowed with EUR 2,500, is awarded annually at the recommendation of the Austrian universities and the conference of the technical colleges to their best graduates of the previous academic year. Two groups are eligible: on the one hand, persons who, under the auspices of the Austrian president, complete a doctorate, and on the other hand graduates of diploma and master programs. The requirement for the latter group is the completion of the diploma examination or the bachelor and master examination, respectively, with honors, as well as an excellent and best-rated diploma or master thesis, respectively. The Appreciation Prize is meant to make visible and honor top performance during academic studies and, at the same time, to be a stimulus for young academics.

In her master thesis "Diversity and Innovation: Which factors besides the demographic diversity of the founding team influence the innovation capability of a new company?" Streicher used a case study to analyse the dynamic of homogeneous founder teams. The thesis shows that the cognitive capabilities to integrate new knowledge in the company, to generate ideas and to identify opportunities are shaped much more by a variety of personal features and mindsets than by the demographic diversity of the founding team.

On August 1, 2014, the fourth amendment of the "Gesetz für den Ausbau erneuerbarer Energien" (Renewable Energy Law, or EEG, for short), came into effect. The EEG regulates the preferred feeding of electricity produced from renewable sources into the power grid and guarantees the producers a fixed remuneration. According to the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie (Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy), the amendment eliminates weaknesses of the former law and adapts unrealistic development goals in the field of renewable energies. At the invitation of the Munich-based Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition and within the framework of the seminar series "[IP]2 - Intellectual Property in Practice", on October 15, 2014, six experts from science and practice discussed with an audience of around 50 knowledgeable persons - bankers, auditors, lawyers, start-up entrepreneurs und doctoral candidates in the engineering sciences - the possible effects of the EEG amendment on innovations in the technological, entrepreneurial and procedural area. The event's organizers, Christian Steinle and Alexandru Steininger of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, were very pleased with the evening, which ended with a reception: "We investigate innovation processes and we wanted the experts to spin visions and scenarios. To this purpose the precise effects of the amendment, which will only be visible from the year 2016 on, have to be awaited. But with these experts we succeeded in looking beyond the dry content of the law and in sharpening their view for possible effects of the amendment on clean-tech innovations".

Die am Max-Planck-Institut entstandene Habilitationsschrift "Wirtschaftsordnung durch Zivilgerichte" von Rupprecht Podszun ist mit einem Roman-Herzog-Forschungspreis Soziale Marktwirtschaft ausgezeichnet worden. Der Preis wird vom Verband der Bayerischen Wirtschaft und dem Roman Herzog Institut vergeben. In gedruckter Form ist die Arbeit gerade in der Reihe Jus Privatum im Verlag Mohr Siebeck erschienen.

Rupprecht Podszun war von 2007-2012 Wissenschaftlicher Referent am Institut im Team von Prof. Dr. Josef Drexl. Inzwischen wurde Rupprecht Podszun auf einen Lehrstuhl an der Universität Bayreuth berufen, dem MPI ist er als Affiliated Research Fellow weiterhin verbunden. In seiner Habilitationsschrift untersucht er die Frage, wie die Zivilgerichte mit Streitigkeiten umgehen, die in der Folge von Deregulierungs- und Privatisierungsmaßnahmen neu entstanden oder aus dem Bereich des Öffentlichen Rechts in das Privatrecht wanderten. 

Fabian Kühnhausen, Research Fellow at the MPI and PhD Candidate at the LMU Munich, received the "Outstanding Doctoral Student Paper Award" for his paper "Financial Innovation and Fragility" from the Eastern Finance Association. He presented the paper at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Eastern Finance Association in Pittsburgh, USA.In his paper, Fabian Kühnhausen empirically investigates the relationship of innovative activity by financial services firms on their individual stability. Using a unique data set that counts financial innovation in the USA, he can show that financial innovation negatively affects firm stability.The paper is available at SSRN.