Academics

Explore key issues facing IP practitioners from both a theoretical and practical approach. Working together with field leaders, you'll take part in topic-based seminars and develop the skills needed to transact intellectual property within a global economy.

The program is composed of several seminars, which focus on different elements of practice as they relate to the overarching theme of international IP transactions. Four small-group tutoring sessions reinforce the content addressed in these seminars and allow you to discuss questions that arise as you connect topics.

Practical insights

The program offers two site visits with workshops that provide you with an opportunity to see current practice in industry and gain insight into international licensing strategies via discussion with corporate legal teams.

• One visit usually takes place at Google's Hamburg office: Learn about the challenges that attorneys may face while working on IT project and  practice your skills in a simulated negotiation about cloud services agreements. 
• The second site visit is yet to be confirmed for 2024. The the past, participants visited Airbus and HomePort, an innovation hub for zero emissions, 3D printing and automation in general.

• DL-101 Online General Course on Intellectual Property
• Algorithmic Licensing and AI: Technological and Legal Issues
• Challenges in License Agreements re Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and Bitcoin Ordinals
• Conflict of Laws in International Agreements
• Drafting Principles
• FRAND Licensing
• Forced Technology Transfers: The Case of China
• IP Aspects of Technology Transactions
• IP Transactions Based on Blockchain and Smart Contracts
• IT and Cloud Projects - Legal Framework and Negotiations
• Legal Aspects of Licensing
• Licensing in Biotech
• Open Source Licensing
• Patent Law and Licensing
• Practical Aspects of Licensing
• Principles of International and European Copyright Law
• Principles of Negotation
• Trademark Licensing: Case Law & Practice

Lecturer: Dr. Stefan Dittmer

The rise of AI, its constant improvement, and the use of AI tools in our day-to-day lives, for businesses and by government agencies, are unstoppable. Copyright and ethics are probably among the most frequently discussed topics surrounding this theme. In this session, we will take a copyright-focused look at the licensing of input and output that shape AI.

Lecturer: Stefan Papastefanou

The introduction of Non-Fungible Token (NFTs), and more recently bitcoin ordinals, as part of the blockchain technology, has raised new legal issues in the drafting, conclusion and enforcement of license agreements. After an extremely sharp rise and subsequent fall of NFTs in 2021, the licensing issues have continued well into 2023 with the introduction of “ordinals” into the bitcoin blockchains. To understand the issue of licensing with or through NFTs and bitcoin ordinals, it is important to understand what these technologies are able to achieve and where they fall short. This lecture focuses on the legal challenges of the various ways of including the respective technologies in IP license agreements.

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Karsten Thorn

This session deals with IP-related European rules on international jurisdiction and conflict of laws (existence and scope of IP rights, infringement, licensing). Where appropriate, a comparison with rules of other jurisdictions will be undertaken.

Lecturer: Lezel Roddeck

This session is designed to help you develop strong drafting skills to create clearly enforceable contractual provisions. We will focus on the key principles of effective drafting, draft clauses without the aid of a precedent, and review clauses to identify drafting errors.

Lecturer: THOMAS VINJE

Description to follow

Lecturer: kEITH hand

This session will focus on tensions related to forced technology transfer in China.  It will include a discussion of the both formal legal rules and informal mechanisms though which foreign investors may be pressured to transfer technology as a condition of investment in China, the response of major trading partners such as the United States and the European Union, and the adequacy of recent legal reforms designed to address concerns over technology transfer. 

Lecturer: Allison Mages

Technology is at the heart of today's business transactions and intellectual property plays a crucial role in making them successful. This session will provide an overview of how IP is dealt with in a variety of transactions, helping you recognize potential stumbling blocks and providing strategies to manage them effectively. We will discuss how IP rights are handled in the context of various transactions, including M&A activity and joint development agreements.

Lecturer: Zoi Michalopoulou

Blockchain, combined with smart contracts, is expected to revolutionize licensing transactions in intellectual property. After explaining the function and main characteristics of this emerging technology, this session will discuss practical examples of current, in part experimental applications: In particular, we will look at blockchain-based platforms, which promise secure licensing of digital content and use smart contracts to automate such transactions and standardize licensing terms and conditions. Thereby, we will focus on legal and technical opportunities as well as challenges. Topics of this session will include the relevance of the blockchain technology for the issue of digital exhaustion in copyright law, the potential of blockchain and smart contracts regarding the administration and enforcement of IP rights and possibilities to protect features of blockchains as IP.

Lecturer: Dr. Jacek Lagoni

This session will provide an overview of problems that attorneys may face while working on IT projects. You will have the opportunity to practice your (legal) skills in a simulated negotiation. There, we will show you negotiation techniques as well as typical issues raised during discussions about cloud services agreements.

This session will take place at the Google office.

Lecturer: Christian Stoll

This session will provide an overview of the general structure of license agreements and the most relevant legal aspects of license agreements. Topics of this session will include the underlying principles of international license agreements, the most relevant provisions in license agreements, applicable law, license agreements in litigations and the relevant rules of antitrust and competition law. The session will include many practical examples to provide a good foundation for the program.

Lecturer: Dr. Philipp Dohnke

This session aims to give a practical insight into licensing and negotiation issues of biotech/pharma license deals – taking into account themes and challenges which have emerged in context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It will explain typical clauses to address these on the basis of a license deal template that will be handed out as part of the lecture.

Lecturers: Prof. Dr. Jeffrey Lefstin and Prof. Dr. Dana Beldiman

While parties are generally free to choose the terms of their license agreements, the legal regime of most jurisdiction circumscribes that freedom to a greater or lesser degree. These limitations may arise from policies of the intellectual property laws, or from other bodies of law. This class will address some of the more important legal limitations on license agreements, including exhaustion and royalty structure, FRAND obligations, bankruptcy, and antitrust (US) or competition law (EU).

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Jeffrey Lefstin

This session will focus on two aspects of patent doctrine and practice that are of special importance for agreements to license technology across borders. It first considers doctrines of patent eligibility, which address what types of inventions may be the subject of patents. Standards of patent eligibility have diverged sharply between the United States and other jurisdictions in the last decade. As a result, key technologies in biomedicine and information technology are patentable in some jurisdictions but not others. Second, this session will address the concept of exhaustion, which limits the ability of licensors to control downstream uses of technology following an authorized use. Limitations imposed by exhaustion at both the national and transnational level will be explored.

Lecturer: Dr. Annemarie Westpfahl

This session will address practical aspects and typical constellations of IP/IT license contracts in the daily work of an IP/IT lawyer. The session focusses on IP/IT licenses in M&A transactions, change of control in license contracts, as well as the nature of sub-licenses and their fate in the event of the termination or expiration of main licenses.

LECTURER: ZOE MICHALOPOULOU

Copyright is one of the four main pillars of intellectual property law besides trademarks, patents and trade secrets. This session will provide an overview of forms of creative works protected by copyright, of creators’ exclusive rights and limitations hereon such as the principle of exhaustion. We will discuss relevant case law and address the relationship between technological progress and copyright law.

Lecturer: Michael Friedman

Negotiation is omnipresent in the professional life of a lawyer and business person. This session will present the topic of negotiation on an introductory level and attempt to outline a number of key aspects and principles. Particular focus will be placed on characteristics of effective negotiators, bargaining styles, value claiming (distributive negotiation) and value creation (integrative negotiation). The session aims to give you insight, tools and vantage points that will assist you in completing the negotiation you will undertake in conclusion of the summer program and in your further professional practice. The session will combine discussion, informal lecture and a variety of workshop-style activities.

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Kristoff Ritlewski

As an example for comparative aspects of international licensing this session will cover different approaches to the principle of exhaustion and how the drafting legal professional might react. While previous sessions will have already covered some basics surrounding the technicalities of licensing, this session will be a good opportunity to review and repeat acquired knowledge in the light of trademarks cases.