German Association for Intellectual Property and Copyright Law (GRUR) and Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition

GRUR

The German Association for the Protection of Industrial Property and Copyright was founded in Berlin in 1891. It is the largest and oldest of the associations in Germany and also known by the abbreviation "GRUR" and the name "Grüner Verein". The statutory purpose is the academic education and the development of intellectual property law, in particular industrial property protection, copyright and fair trading law, as well as antitrust law and other related fields of law at the national, European and international level. The Association does not pursue any personal, professional or commercial interests, but exclusively scientific, non-profit-making purposes. 

The special committees and working groups discuss issues of national, European and international law and prepare the Association's statements on draft laws, directives and agreements as well as on questions of application of the law. The statements are forwarded to the responsible ministries, authorities or committees and are consistently highly regarded for their competence, neutrality and balance. 

In this way they contribute not only to the further training of their members but also to the scientific monitoring and further development of these areas of the law. 

Since 1953 the Association has been publishing the renowned journal "GRUR-International" which is (since 2020) published in English by the Oxford University Press (OUP). The Journal includes academic articles on issues of German, European and international intellectual property law as well as significant case law.

Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition

The Institute was founded in 1966 as the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Patent, Copyright and Competition Law. In 2013, after the establishment of a new economics department, its name was changed to Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition.

Since its founding 50 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, 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.