Institute News

Geographical Indications (GIs) are designations for products from a geographical area that owe their quality or reputation to their geographical origin. In the European Union, they are protected as Intellectual Property rights by an independent legal system. Since they are also an instrument of agricultural policy to promote production and living conditions in rural areas, there are many differences with other fields of IP rights. Specificities also arise from the fact that the first and often most important phase of the granting of rights takes place before national authorities, whereby national traditions and idiosyncrasies could impair the desired uniformity of protection.

Since there has been little legal research on GIs - despite increased attention to the subject from politics and the economy - the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition launched a research project at the beginning of last year to analyze the GI system within the EU and beyond. On 13 and 14 February, the Institute hosted a workshop on GIs in which international experts from academia and practice, as well as representatives of authorities from the EU and some member states, took part. During the workshop, the Institute's researchers were able to present their preliminary research results and discuss with the participants.

Geographical Indications in the EU

To start the workshop, project coordinator Andrea Zappalaglio explained the aims and structure of the project; he presented the results of the evaluation and empirical analysis of the protection parameters summarized in the specifications for GIs registered in the EU database DOOR (Database of Origin & Registration). In this database, managed by the EU Commission, all registered agricultural products and foodstuffs are published.

Afterwards, representatives of the EU Commission provided insights into the work and plans of the new Commission. Francis Fay, head of the unit responsible for GIs in the Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DG Agri), and Valerie Dufour from DG Agri explained the Commission's current audit practice and the EU policy on GIs and discussed with the participants the challenges and options for optimizing the system. Marie D'Avigneau and Malwina Mejer from the Directorate-General for the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG Grow) reported on the status of work on creating protection of GIs for non-agricultural products.

On the second day of the workshop, the Max Planck research team first presented the preliminary results of a comparative analysis of the national procedures under which GI applications are examined in the member states. Alexander von Mühlendahl, lawyer at the Munich law firm Bardehle Pagenberg and Visiting Professor at Queen Mary University in London, and Elisa Zaera Cuadrado from the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) then explained the relationship between trademarks and GIs in EU law and the examination practice of the EUIPO. Pilar Montero from the University of Alicante spoke about the scope of protection of GIs, which has developed from EU law and the case law of the European Court of Justice.
 

GIs from an international perspective

In the morning’s second session, the workshop focused on the international perspective. Roxana Blasetti from the University of Buenos Aires, who is a Visiting Scientist at the Institute, presented the negotiated solution for the mutual protection of GIs of the contracting parties in the Free Trade Agreement between the EU and the Mercosur countries.

Subsequently, Max Planck researchers Suelen Carls and Pedro Batista gave an overview of the Institute's project "Smart IP for Latin America" and explained the research activities related to the component of the project devoted to examining the protection of GIs in selected Latin American countries. In the final talk, Alexandra Grazioli, Director of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), spoke about opportunities and challenges for the Lisbon Agreement on Appellations of Origin and Geographical Indications administered by WIPO following the entry into force of the Geneva Act on 26 February 2020.

The workshop ended with an intensive discussion in the afternoon of the second day, moderated by Max Planck researcher Annette Kur. The valuable feedback from the participants gave the Institute's research group important impulses for their further work. After the empirical analysis of the GIs registered in the EU, the project will focus on the functioning of the national authorities involved in the protection system and on the cooperation between them, the applicants and the EU Commission. Based on these empirical findings, an analysis of selected legal questions will follow.

The power of digital platforms does not only pose new challenges for consumers and small businesses, but also for competition authorities. The extent to which competition policy needs new instruments to counteract tendencies of power concentration in the platform economy has for long been at the center of an ongoing debate. The planned 10th amendment to the Act against Restraints of Competition (GWB), now intends to provide the Bundeskartellamt with additional instruments enabling the authority to act more effectively with regard to digital companies who possess market power. The aim of the law is to create a “digital regulatory framework”.
 

On the occasion of the official publication of the draft bill, Thorsten Käseberg, Head of the Department of Competition and Consumer Policy at the Federal Ministry of Economics, presented an overview of the planned new provisions of the "GWB Digitization Act" at an event at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition co-organized by the Münchner Kartellrechtsforum e.V.
 

The centerpiece of the draft bill is the modernization of the rules on abusive conduct by companies who possess outstanding market power. "You can say that the wind has turned significantly with regard to this concern”, said Käseberg at the beginning of his lecture, summarizing the general sentiment both in society and in many competition authorities worldwide. An increasing number of observers have indicated that with the traditional rules the authorities would hardly be able to effectively control certain unilateral strategies of dominant companies in the digital sector.
 

The amendment addresses the increasing importance of data by introducing "access to competition-relevant data" as an additional factor for assessing the market position of a company (Section 18 (3) GWB, new version). In addition, in the new Section 18 (3b), the concept of "intermediary power" as a factor for determining a dominant market position has been introduced to the law. This provision intends to better capture the role of platforms as intermediaries in multilateral markets.
 

By expanding the "Essential Facilities Doctrine" the GWB amendment takes the importance of data for digital business models into account. "We have tried to open up and internationalize the provision which previously only referred to physical infrastructures”, said Käseberg. If a dominant company refuses to grant another company access to data, this behavior can be classified as abusive under certain conditions according to the new Section 19 (2) No. 4. "Even if we cannot finally solve the issue of data governance, we want to create an instrument for cases of clear abuse.”
 

According to Käseberg's assessment, the new Section 19a is expected to be highly controversial. This provision addresses platforms who dispose of an outstanding market power across several markets. With regard to such companies the Bundeskartellamt would be able to establish that they belong to this category and to subsequently interdict certain strategies of such platforms. This includes self-preferencing, leveraging of market power and impeding data portability.
 

The German rules on abusive conduct apply already below the market power threshold in the case of relative market power or dependency. According to the planned revision of Section 20 (1) the application of these rules will in the future not any more be limited to cases where small and medium enterprises are possible plaintiffs.
 

In addition to the reform of abuse control, the 10th amendment to the GWB will adapt the thresholds for merger control and create more legal security for cooperation between companies. The amendment also implements the ECN+ Directive, which aims to strengthen the competition authorities in the EU Member States.

For the second time now, the two-day event was organized by Ph.D. students and Postdocs of the Department for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research headed by Dietmar Harhoff to give young scholars the opportunity to present and discuss their work.

This year’s attendants experienced two workshop days filled with an exciting program comprising 14 paper presentations on the Economics of Innovation, Science and Entrepreneurship based on various methodological approaches, which were followed by 14 discussions from experienced researchers. A special highlight of the event was the inspiring keynote speech by Pierre Azoulay, Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

On the first day, the workshop focused on topics related to the determinants of scientific productivity. Speakers presented research findings on how scientists select interesting research questions and potential collaborators as well as on the relevance of access to funding and research tools. The afternoon was dedicated to the role of gender in science, especially to analyzing peer effects and the importance of female role models. To conclude the day, keynote speaker Pierre Azoulay presented interesting research results on “The Impact of Scientific Training on Today’s Trainers”. He emphasized the role of training in nurturing scientific talents and the importance of building programs that incentivize them to remain active in science.

The morning of the second day offered interesting insights on innovation and entrepreneurship. Young scholars presented research on the geographic diffusion of knowledge as well as on the transfer of scientific knowledge into commercial applications. They shed light on the circumstances under which universities and individual researchers foster the innovation outcomes of their communities. In the afternoon, the workshop focused on the design and effects of intellectual property rights regimes. Researchers simulated the consequences of changes in the current European patent system. Additionally, they provided evidence on the effects of patents on start-ups as well as on the pricing behavior of firms.

See the complete program with all topics here and check out on Twitter under #RISE2Workshop.

The RISE workshop series aims at stimulating a rigorous in-depth discussion of a selected number of research papers by Ph.D. students and Junior Postdocs, providing feedback and connecting with peers from other research institutions. Accordingly, the workshop brings together young researchers from all over Europe and the US with researchers from the Munich Innovation Community.

We thank all organizing parties involved and all participants, including the keynote speaker, discussants and presenters for a truly outstanding RISE2 Workshop 2019. With great enthusiasm and motivation, we look forward to the RISE3 Workshop 2020.

Data are the engine of the digital transformation. They are at the center of new business models, they feed the development of artificial intelligence and enable innovation.

In the digital era undertakings, consumers and the state depend on access to data controlled by others in many contexts. The need and justification for new data access rules, as well as the question of how they should be designed, not only present new challenges for political decision-makers – both at national and EU level – but have recently also gained more attention in legal scholarship.

It was therefore the aim of the Consumer Rights Days 2019 to bring together representatives from scholarship and politics to discuss the future of data access regimes. The Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, under the leadership of its Director Josef Drexl, was in charge of organizing the academic side of the two-day conference hosted at the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection. Through presentations, keynotes and a panel discussion, participants considered how access to data in the digital era should be designed to promote innovation and competition while ensuring that privacy interests and trade secrets are adequately protected. The event highlighted the issue of data access not only from the perspective of competition policy but also with a particular focus on public interest grounds and consumer interests.

The keynote on the first day of the conference was given by Professor Christiane Wendehorst. As Co-Speaker for the Federal Government's Data Ethics Commission, she explained the most important results of the Commission's work. In the keynote on the second day, Malte Beyer-Katzenberger from the European Commission provided an idea of what kind of initiatives to promote access to data are to be expected from the Commission. Representing the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Professor Josef Drexl spoke on the potential introduction of data access claims of users regarding data generated by smart products. Jörg Hoffmann evaluated the potential of existing and future sector-specific access claims of competitors, and Heiko Richter discussed rules enabling the state to access private sector data based on public interest grounds.

The contributions to the conference are expected to be published in an edited volume before the end of 2020. Not least, the potential political impact of the conference has to be assessed against the backdrop that Germany will take over the Presidency of the Council of the EU in the second half of 2020. There is no doubt about the significance the goal of enhanced data access now has for the German government. "We are committed to improving access to data, and with the Consumer Rights Days public interest grounds and consumer interests move to the center of the debate. Yet, it will remain essential that the protection of the rights of every individual is equally guaranteed ", said State Secretary Gerd Billen at the close of the conference.

Find a detailed Summary of the Conumer Rights Days (in German) here.
 

When the Bavarian Academy of Sciences convenes its members and selected guests for its annual session in the pre-Christmas season, this event traditionally takes on a very solemn character. In the exclusive setting of the Hercules Hall in the Munich Residence, the proceedings do not only revolve around the 260-year history of the non-university research institution. With the quantum technology research of the Leibniz Computing Center, the Walther Meißner Institute for Low Temperature Research as part of Bavaria's high-tech agenda, and the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt), founded in 2018, the Academy is also playing a leading role on topics that matter for the future. "The academy looks back on a venerable history and at the same time pursues research on major issues concerning the future", the Bavarian Science Minister Bernd Sibler summarized this year in his welcoming address to the members of the Academy and the invited guests.

This December, the academic lecture - traditionally one of the highlights of the agenda - was dedicated to digital transformation. Professor Josef Drexl, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition and a member of the Academy since 2010, spoke about the legal challenges arising from data-driven business models.

Digitization is not only fundamentally changing the economy and society. New technological developments also present challenges to existing law. "The liberal and democratic society faces the major task of regaining its own values in the face of technological, economic and social change to rethink and reorganize the relationship between the state, the economy and citizens", Josef Drexl set as a basic thesis in the center of his talk. 

Against the backdrop of three examples – the protests against the recent EU copyright reform, the discussion about the introduction of data ownership and the challenges competition law is confronted with in the digital sector – he showed that the existing instruments of market regulation are often no longer suitable to solve the modern problems of the digital economy without taking into account the fundamental rights of citizens, in particular the right to data protection.

In his lecture, the Director at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition also made clear that currently all countries in the world have to make a decision on the status of their citizens' fundamental rights, not least with regard to the functioning of democracy in the future. In this context, he clearly rejected the one-dimensional characterization of data protection as an obstacle to digital innovation that would impair Europe’s competitiveness especially in comparison to the USA and China.  "It would be wrong to see the protection of personal data as a one-sided obstacle to innovation. It sets the standards how to deal with data in the digital age. At the same time, it creates the necessary incentives for digital innovations that are needed to make data protection technically possible”, said Josef Drexl in the Munich Residence.

The complete academic lecture can be found here

You can listen to the lecture in the podcast