Institute News

Call For Unpublished Papers on the Licensing and Litigation of SEPs

The digital economy relies on information communication technology (ICT) standards to meet consumers’ demand for interoperability, connectivity and innovation. The diffusion of global standards such as 5G, Wi-Fi 6 and HEVC drives economic growth and prosperity by enabling the Internet of Things and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. However, as ICT standards become general-purpose technologies, tensions arise regarding licensing patents declared as essential for their implementation (i.e., standard-essential patents, SEPs).

Under the Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) licensing commitments before standard-development organisations (SDOs), SEP-holders seek remuneration from SEP implementers, which these latter sometimes resist. Against this background, the Florence Seminar on SEPs welcomes unpublished papers from lawyers and economists on the licensing and litigation of SEPs. The selected contributions will be discussed in-depth during the two-day Seminar, emphasising the societal impact of the research findings.

Suggested areas comprise:

• FRAND royalty rate calculation (e.g., transparency, entire-market value rule vs smallest saleable patent practising unit, how to set a FRAND royalty rate in new IoT verticals);
• Multi-party SEP licensing solutions (e.g., cross-licensing, patent pools, defensive patent aggregators and licensing-negotiation groups);
• Patent exhaustion and FRAND licensing across IoT verticals;
• SEP infringement and remedies;
• Jurisdictional issues of SEP disputes (e.g., applicable law, anti-suit injunctions, national judgments on global FRAND licenses);
• FRAND alternative dispute resolution mechanisms;
• Market definition and market power vis-à-vis SEPs;
• Unilateral and multilateral antitrust issues of SEP licensing and litigation.

Scientific committee:

• Marco Botta | EUI
• Ginevra Bruzzone | LUISS
• Beatriz Conde Gallego | Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
• Josef Drexl | Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition
• Lapo Filistrucchi | EUI – University of Florence
• Igor Nikolic | EUI
• Pier Luigi Parcu | EUI
• Nicolas Petit | EUI
• Maria Alessandra Rossi | University of Chieti Pescara

Organising committee:

• Chiara Carrozza | EUI
• Niccolò Galli | EUI

Submission: Please submit extended abstracts or full papers by 31 May 2022. Acceptance notifications will be sent by mid-June 2022. Final paper versions of the selected submissions are due by  18 September 2022.

Abstract Submission

From 8 to 10 June 2022, the Center for Law & Economics at ETH Zurich, the Chair for Technology and Innovation Management at TUM, the Chair for Economics of Innovation at TUM,  the Institute for Strategy, Technology and Organization at LMU Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition will jointly organize the sixth Munich Summer Institute.

We plan to hold the Munich Summer Institute 2022 as an in-person event (no hybrid meeting) in Munich. If the Covid19 pandemic makes such physical meeting unfeasible, we will shift to an online event on the same days. This year, the Munich Summer Institute will be preceded by a doctoral workshop on 7 June.

The Summer Institute will focus on three areas:

• Digitalization, Strategy and Organization
  (chairs: Jörg Claussen and Tobias Kretschmer),
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship
  (chairs: Dietmar Harhoff, Joachim Henkel and Hanna Hottenrott), and
• Law & Economics of Intellectual Property, Innovation & Digitalization
  (chair: Stefan Bechtold).

The goal of the Munich Summer Institute is to stimulate a rigorous in-depth discussion of a select number of research papers and to strengthen the interdisciplinary international research community in these areas. Researchers in economics, law, management and related fields at all stages of their career (from Ph.D. students to full professors) may attend the Munich Summer Institute as presenters in a plenary or a poster session, as discussants or as attendants. The Munich Summer Institute will feature three keynote lectures, 12 plenary presentations and a daily poster session (including a poster slam). The Munich Summer Institute focuses on quantitative empirical research. Participation in the Munich Summer Institute is by invitation only. 

Keynote speakers are:

• Hanna Halaburda, New York University
• Nicola Lacetera, University of Toronto
• Melissa Wasserman, University of Texas at Austin

Paper submission procedure

Researchers who would like to present a paper are invited to submit their paper online until 15 March 2022. The Munich Summer Institute only considers papers which have not been published or accepted for publication at the date of submission. Paper selections will be announced in mid-April 2022. The program of the Munich Summer Institute will be available in early May 2022. Final papers will be made available to conference participants on a public website, and are due on 15 May 2022. Researchers who would like to attend the Munich Summer Institute without giving a presentation should contact one of the organizers by 15 May 2022. 

Further information

More information is available at the MSI website. Any questions concerning the Munich Summer Institute should be directed to Stefan Bechtold, Jörg Claussen, Dietmar Harhoff, Joachim Henkel, Hanna Hottenrott or Tobias Kretschmer.

The workshop was first organized by Junior Researchers in 2018, and is aimed at Ph.D. students and Junior Postdocs worldwide. RISE offers them an opportunity to present their work, receive feedback from experienced researchers and connect with peers from other research institutions. Keynote Speaker of the RISE4 Workshop is Catherine Tucker, Professor of Management Science and Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan and Chair of the MIT Sloan PhD Program.

Get the program here (PDF).
More on the workshop website RISE4 Workshop.

Head of the new Max Planck Partner Group will be Mor Bakhoum, who was a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute from 2009 to 2018 and is still associated with the Institute as an Affiliated Research Fellow. In addition, Mor Bakhoum continues to teach at the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center (MIPLC) the course “Competition Law in Emerging Markets” and supervises master theses of MIPLC students. He also currently heads the doctoral school of the Université virtuelle du Sénégal (UVS).

The Partner Group, which is based at the UVS, will comprise, apart from Mor Bakhoum, seven postdoctoral researchers, two doctoral students and a research assistant. In collaboration with the team at the Institute in Munich, they will undertake research activities on the issue of regulation of the digital economy and data access in relation to sustainable development. The Group will publish position papers and articles as well as support doctoral students at the UVS doctoral school working on the topic of data and the digital economy. The research within the Partner Group is closely linked to the Institute’s Research Project “Regulation of the data economy in emerging economies”.

The Max Planck Partner Groups are an instrument of the Max Planck Society in the joint promotion of researchers with countries interested in strengthening their research through international cooperation. A Partner Group can be set up on condition that outstanding young researchers, following their tenure at a Max Planck Institute, return to their home country and carry out further research on a subject that is also of interest to their previous host Institute. More than 70 Partner Groups exist worldwide at the moment.

In four thematic sections, diagnoses of the status quo are first presented, followed by specific options for policy measures. The statement provides answers to the following questions, among others:

• Effects of the pandemic on the economic structural change: Under what conditions can existing growth potentials be leveraged?
• Possible consequences of the pandemic on the distribution of wealth and social inequality: How can decision-makers respond in the areas of education and training, the fostering of gender equality and the design of the social security net?
• Limits to the performance of public organizations in the crisis: What are their causes and how can they be overcome?
• Sustainability of public finances: What are the reform options for national debt? How relevant is local government financing and investment activity after the pandemic?

More information on the Leopoldina website.

Go directly to the statement (in German).

Women are still significantly underrepresented in IT professions. Only about 8 percent of all IT apprentices in Germany are female (source: Statistisches Bundesamt, 2020). The IT world of work has traditionally been considered a male domain, even though programming, for example, was still a typical female occupation in the 1980s as busywork for office staff. One exception was the U.S. computer scientist and computer pioneer Grace Hopper who worked with the Mark I, the world’s first fully electronic computer, at Harvard University from the mid-1940s.

There are also economic reasons why policymakers and the industry are trying to attract more women to IT professions: Due to the shortage of skilled workers, vacant IT positions can no longer be filled (source: Handelsblatt) . Nevertheless, young women in the IT sector still have to contend with obstacles and prejudices.

We asked Cristiane Stülp about her personal experiences on her way to becoming an IT specialist and what advice she would give to young women interested in following the same career path.

The young Brazilian with German roots emphasizes that, at the beginning of her path, a certain amount of risk-taking was required to even go to Germany. Her family played an important role. In a way, her older sister, who had completed an agricultural internship in Germany, served as a female role model. Cristiane Stülp had initially planned only a one-year internship – in the meantime, she has been in Germany for almost five years.

The IT specialist reports that her family has an agricultural business in Brazil. However, her parents never mapped out her career path in accordance with their expectations, but were always open to her own career aspirations. One thing she learnt from the agricultural environment was to assert herself. She emphasizes that she is not afraid of working as the only women in a team of men.

Her interest in IT came also from her personal background. Even as a girl, she had to stand up to her brothers to get her fair share of limited computer time. Her partner, who works in the IT sector, always encouraged her to pursue her interests in the field and to look for a vocational training. This again required assertiveness and persistence – both in dealing with the immigration authorities and in the search for a vocational training institution.

When choosing her career, she never had anyone advising her against an IT vocational training – although many were surprised. For her colleagues, too, it was new territory to no longer work only among men – but she never encountered any prejudice or resistance in the IT team, which Cristiane Stülp likes to jokingly call “my guys”. On the contrary, she has experienced great appreciation, support, and encouragement.

Working in a mixed team has proved successful. The IT department would like to recruit more female trainees, but there is a shortage of applicants. In the last round of applications, their share was far below 5 percent. When it comes to internal tasks, Cristiane Stülp also likes to seek out responsibility, for example for the younger apprentices. She believes that it is her specifically “female” quality that she can identify organizational improvement potential and thus contribute to solutions with greater sustainability as part of the team.

Although women tend to have higher exit rates in male-dominated professions (source: Accenture, 2020), Cristiane wants to continue working in the IT field after her training. She is particularly interested in system administration. She is happy to continue working at the Institute after her exams.

The training and examination period during the COVID-19 pandemic brought great additional challenges and also personal losses – Cristiane Stülp overcame all this with great mental strength and maturity. She also emphasizes that it was striking that she encountered very few young female IT trainees in the vocational school environment, but rather independent adult women.

After her successful training, she is first and foremost looking forward to seeing her family in Brazil as soon as this is possible. At the end of the interview, she makes a wonderful closing statement: “I, as a woman here at the Institute, am just happy.” She would take the same path again at any time.

(The interview was conducted by Myriam Rion, Hella Schuster, and Ulrike Garlet.)

The growth of the Institute’s scientific reputation during his tenure is due in great measure to his scientific achievements in the fields of unfair competition and copyright law. With large-scale comparative law studies he laid the foundations for the European harmonisation in unfair competition law, where his primary concern was a consumer-protection orientation of the field. Subsequent generations of scholars associate his name above all with the leading commentary on German copyright law that he founded. Not only was he a pervasive and system-building force in the field of copyright. He also fought for legislative improvements to the contractual protection of authors, while sending clear messages to adversaries. He received many honours for his scientific achievements, chief among them honorary doctorates from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, the University of Stockholm and Yonsei University in Seoul.

In Germany and many other parts of the world one encounters an impressive number of his former PhD candidates and students who today hold leading positions in legal scholarship and practice. Furthermore, as a full professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich one of his highest priorities was always the training of undergraduate students. Thus he did not hesitate to take on the double burden of directing the Institute on his own after the retirement of his colleague and close friend Friedrich-Karl Beier, while at the same time carrying out his main duties at the University until his scheduled retirement date.

Nor were these later years an easy time for the Institute, whose very existence was at stake. Gerhard Schricker succeeded in turning the tide and securing its continuation. This was due primarily to his proposal to establish a globally leading course of studies in intellectual property law in collaboration with partner universities, at the time an attractive science policy move for the Max Planck Society. The appointment of not one but several new directors just after the turn of the millennium and the creation of the degree programme at the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center offered together with the University of Augsburg, TU Munich and George Washington University show that Gerhard Schricker deserves particular gratitude for having paved the way for the Institute’s future.

Most of the Institute’s current employees were not able to get to know Gerhard Schricker personally, as shortly after his retirement ill health forced him to give up his research activities and retire completely into private family life. It is there that he has died after many years of serious illness. He will be remembered by many for his refined mind, his constant and caring support and at the same time for his modest nature.

Personal Webpage of Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Gerhard Schricker