The class Comparative Law II – The Common/Civil Law divide will focus on the Common/Civil Law divide and in particular compare aspects of the legal system in Germany on the one hand, and Australia/the United States on the other hand. Methodological differences between the Civil law and the Common law systems will be pointed out, and subjects of particular importance for daily business, such as formation of contracts, agency, contract interpretation etc., will be treated in greater detail.

The course has three main components. The first part of the course will consider the origins and utility of comparative law, its aims, tools and methods. The second part of the course will review and analyse the two main legal traditions in the world, Common Law and Civil Law. The objective will be to understand differences and similarities between these two ways of understanding law and organizing legal institutions and procedures, on the other hand. In this context, an overview on the differences with regard to the rule of law, judicial review and the legal profession will be provided. The third part of the course will focus upon applying comparative legal analysis to actual cases and international disputes and show how the results differ depending on which legal order is applied.

• Basic features, tools and methods of comparative law
• Development and current status of Common Law as a legal family
• Development and current status of Civil Law as a legal family
• The education and role of lawyers
• Judges and judiciaries, lay judges and juries
• Legal reasoning
• Statutes and their construction
• Judicial precedents
• Particular legal institutions and instruments in a comparative assessment

The amount and value of new digital objects appeared due to the ongoing development of information technologies and covered by the concept “digital assets” is constantly and impressively growing.  However, the legal landscape for such objects is still under considerations. The main issue that needs to be resolved to ensure rights of digital assets’ holders is which legal provisions are the most appropriate for the regulation of relations regarding digital assets.
This course aims to both give understanding of the digital assets and ways to protect rights to digital assets in terms of current legislation and case law as well as defining digital ownership as a perspective way to protect rights to digital assets. It is also important to understand the border between data and digital assets, how these two groups of digital objects are correlated and what are the differences in their protection. That is why the course embraces also the basics of data protection. Based on that, the course covers such topics:
 

• Digital assets: notion, types, legal landscape
• Digital ownership: European and American perspectives
• Digital assets and data: the basics of data protection
• Personal and machine-generated data ownership issues
• Cryptocurrencies, NFT and other crypto-assets
• Social media and online gaming accounts
• Digital inheritance

The first topic aims to introduce current approaches to the definition of digital assets, describe types of digital assets and recent legislative findings on digital assets regulation.
In the second chapter the concept of digital ownership as a type of ownership will be described, current developments on implementing this concept in European and American legal field will be highlighted, the feasibility and necessity of this concept for protection of rights to digital assets will be explained.
The third section covers basics of privacy law, data protection, gives understanding of Big Data, Internet of Things (IoT), the link between data and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Issues of correlation between information and data concepts will be discussed in this section.
The fourth chapter looks into the current legal regulation of personal data and machine-generated data, aiming to describe the concept of data ownership and its correlation with digital ownership.
The fifth chapter aims to discuss approach to legal regulation of cryptocurrencies and other crypto-assets both at the European and national legislative level. It specifically focuses on the issues of NFT, including their transfer and connection to intellectual property rights.
Social media and online gaming accounts will be discussed from the digital ownership perspective. Tradable elements of the account will be revealed, current possibilities to protect rights and get benefits from social and online gaming accounts considering provisions of the Terms of Service will be discussed.
In the section on digital inheritance current issues and instruments to define post-mortal fate of digital assets will be discussed. Possible legal frames for common and civil law to dispose of digital assets will be highlighted, the US experience to solve this issue will be considered. 

Learning outcomes and qualification goals:
The course intends to provide students with a deeper understanding of the digital assets concept and approaches to protect rights to digital assets.

Exam type: essay

Special Requirements: participation in discussions, presentation of the key topics during the course is required.


About the Lecturer:

Prof. Dr. Kateryna Nekit is a Professor in the Civil Law Department at the National University “Odesa Law Academy” and currently serves as a Research Fellow and Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Mannheim. In 2022, she completed her habilitation thesis on the right to private property in the information society and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Juridical Science (equivalent to Dr. Habil.).
From August 2022 to July 2023, she was a Guest Researcher at the Center for SME Research and Entrepreneurship at the University of Mannheim, where she led the project “Digital Assets in the Activities of Technology-Oriented Startups”. Drawing on this experience, she developed the course “Digital Assets Regulation”, which she has been teaching at the University of Mannheim since 2023.
Since 2023, she has also been an invited speaker at Mannheim Business School and a Guest Professor at the Salzburg Summer School on Private Law. In 2024, she served as a Guest Professor at the University of Brescia (Italy), delivering a lecture series titled “Legal Implications of Digital Assets” for PhD students.
Her research focuses on digital property and the role of data in the digital age.

 

• Concept and different forms of companies
• Public international law of companies
• Private international law of companies
• Comparative company law
• Companies in international dispute resolution

• Cahn, Andreas/Donald, David C.: Comparative Company Law, 2nd edition, Cambridge 2020, Cambridge University Press
• Gerner-Beuerle, Carsten/Anderson Schillig, Michael: Comparative Company Law, Oxford 2018, Oxford University Press
• Kraakman, Reinier et al.: The Anatomy of Corporate Law, 3rd edition, Oxford 2017, Oxford University Press

The International Trade Law course seeks to familiarize students with the numerous legal issues that commonly arise in the context of the trade in goods and services between and among nations. In addition, the course provides students with the economic theories underlying international trade and the history of international trade. The areas of coverage during the course include the following:

• The theory of „comparative advantage“ developed and popularized by the Eighteenth Century British economist, David Ricardo, along with subsequent critiques and modifications of this theory.
• The beginnings of trade between nations beginning in ancient times and its expansion, development and increasing sophistication during the subsequent centuries.
• The continuing conflict between the principles and practices of „free trade“ and those of „mercantilism,“ sometimes described as „import substitution.“
• The development of free trade agreements („FTAs“) during the previous 300 years and the relatively recent phenomenon of „trade blocs“ and „customs unions“ involving groups of nations pursuing common economic and political objectives. Examples of these latter types of trade combinations are the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations („ASEAN“)
• The establishment of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade („GATT“) after World War II and its transformation into the World Trade Organization („WTO“) in 1995.
• The structure, operations and goals of the WTO and the various trade agreements that bind all WTO members („Multilateral Agreements“) and those agreements that only bind those nations acceding to their terms („Plurilateral Agreements“).
• The future of the WTO and trade blocs in the Twenty-First Century.

The class Comparative Law II – The Common/Civil Law divide will focus on the Common/Civil Law divide and in particular compare aspects of the legal system in Germany on the one hand, and Australia/the United States on the other hand. Methodological differences between the Civil law and the Common law systems will be pointed out, and subjects of particular importance for daily business, such as formation of contracts, agency, contract interpretation etc., will be treated in greater detail.

The course has three main components. The first part of the course will consider the origins and utility of comparative law, its aims, tools and methods. The second part of the course will review and analyse the two main legal traditions in the world, Common Law and Civil Law. The objective will be to understand differences and similarities between these two ways of understanding law and organizing legal institutions and procedures, on the other hand. In this context, an overview on the differences with regard to the rule of law, judicial review and the legal profession will be provided. The third part of the course will focus upon applying comparative legal analysis to actual cases and international disputes and show how the results differ depending on which legal order is applied.

• Basic features, tools and methods of comparative law
• Development and current status of Common Law as a legal family
• Development and current status of Civil Law as a legal family
• The education and role of lawyers
• Judges and judiciaries, lay judges and juries
• Legal reasoning
• Statutes and their construction
• Judicial precedents
• Particular legal institutions and instruments in a comparative assessment

The course offers an introduction to the economic theory of corporate governance and its application to corporate law, including aspects of insolvency, securities, and tax law. To obtain a thorough understanding of the theory, students are asked to read classic contributions to the corporate governance literature and to discuss them in class.

✓ Key features of business corporations
✓ Historical development of the modern business corporation
✓ Corporate governance as a functional perspective
✓ Economic theory of the firm
✓ Agency cost view on corporate governance: agency costs of equity and debt
✓ Transaction cost view on corporate governance: bargaining over quasi-rents of the firm
✓ Legal institutions to minimize the agency costs of equity: constraints on management and dominant shareholders in the public corporation
✓ Legal institutions to minimize the agency costs of debt: legal capital; piercing the corporate veil
✓ Legal institutions to minimize the costs of rent-seeking: management independence
✓ Control transactions and the market for corporate control 

The amount and value of new digital objects appeared due to the ongoing development of information technologies and covered by the concept “digital assets” is constantly and impressively growing.  However, the legal landscape for such objects is still under considerations. The main issue that needs to be resolved to ensure rights of digital assets’ holders is which legal provisions are the most appropriate for the regulation of relations regarding digital assets.
This course aims to both give understanding of the digital assets and ways to protect rights to digital assets in terms of current legislation and case law as well as defining digital ownership as a perspective way to protect rights to digital assets. It is also important to understand the border between data and digital assets, how these two groups of digital objects are correlated and what are the differences in their protection. That is why the course embraces also the basics of data protection. Based on that, the course covers such topics:
 

• Digital assets: notion, types, legal landscape
• Digital ownership: European and American perspectives
• Digital assets and data: the basics of data protection
• Personal and machine-generated data ownership issues
• Cryptocurrencies, NFT and other crypto-assets
• Social media and online gaming accounts
• Digital inheritance

The first topic aims to introduce current approaches to the definition of digital assets, describe types of digital assets and recent legislative findings on digital assets regulation.
In the second chapter the concept of digital ownership as a type of ownership will be described, current developments on implementing this concept in European and American legal field will be highlighted, the feasibility and necessity of this concept for protection of rights to digital assets will be explained.
The third section covers basics of privacy law, data protection, gives understanding of Big Data, Internet of Things (IoT), the link between data and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Issues of correlation between information and data concepts will be discussed in this section.
The fourth chapter looks into the current legal regulation of personal data and machine-generated data, aiming to describe the concept of data ownership and its correlation with digital ownership.
The fifth chapter aims to discuss approach to legal regulation of cryptocurrencies and other crypto-assets both at the European and national legislative level. It specifically focuses on the issues of NFT, including their transfer and connection to intellectual property rights.
Social media and online gaming accounts will be discussed from the digital ownership perspective. Tradable elements of the account will be revealed, current possibilities to protect rights and get benefits from social and online gaming accounts considering provisions of the Terms of Service will be discussed.
In the section on digital inheritance current issues and instruments to define post-mortal fate of digital assets will be discussed. Possible legal frames for common and civil law to dispose of digital assets will be highlighted, the US experience to solve this issue will be considered. 

Learning outcomes and qualification goals:
The course intends to provide students with a deeper understanding of the digital assets concept and approaches to protect rights to digital assets.

Exam type: essay

Special Requirements: participation in discussions, presentation of the key topics during the course is required.


About the Lecturer:

Prof. Dr. Kateryna Nekit is a Professor in the Civil Law Department at the National University “Odesa Law Academy” and currently serves as a Research Fellow and Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Mannheim. In 2022, she completed her habilitation thesis on the right to private property in the information society and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Juridical Science (equivalent to Dr. Habil.).
From August 2022 to July 2023, she was a Guest Researcher at the Center for SME Research and Entrepreneurship at the University of Mannheim, where she led the project “Digital Assets in the Activities of Technology-Oriented Startups”. Drawing on this experience, she developed the course “Digital Assets Regulation”, which she has been teaching at the University of Mannheim since 2023.
Since 2023, she has also been an invited speaker at Mannheim Business School and a Guest Professor at the Salzburg Summer School on Private Law. In 2024, she served as a Guest Professor at the University of Brescia (Italy), delivering a lecture series titled “Legal Implications of Digital Assets” for PhD students.
Her research focuses on digital property and the role of data in the digital age.

 

Intellectual property is an indispensable tool to foster innovation and assure protection of achievements. They are an important factor for remaining competitive in the global knowledge-based economy. The shift from corporal goods to intellectual property however has many implications for today’s businesses: they have to play the system to gain from it, have to develop new business models, acquire rights by contract and closely watch the market and competitors to avoid liability. The course accordingly is designed to provide an overview on the concept of intellectual property and the practical implications for businesses.

Students will familiarize themselves with the multi-level system of IP-protection on a worldwide (TRIPS and WIPO-Treaties), European (EU-legislation) and national level. With regard to the latter the transformation of international and European requirements into national law, German intellectual property law will be taken as an example. Participants from other jurisdictions however will be encouraged to analyse differences to the corresponding legal concepts in their home jurisdictions.

The course will cover the legal concepts of patent protection and utility models, the rules on the protection of trademarks and designations of origin, the basics of copyright law and of design protection. Where appropriate the course will also highlight certain rules under unfair competition law providing ancillary remedies for avoiding unfair exploitation of work results.

The course devotes to the co-existence of national and Community IP-rights. The advantages and disadvantages of the existing unitary Community concepts, i.e. the Community Trade Mark and the Community Design as compared to national IPRs will be discussed in the light of relevant case law.

Furthermore, the conflicting aims of freedom of competition (and in particular free movement of goods) on the one hand and strict IP-protection on the other hand will be tackled. This gives the opportunity to discuss current trends to narrow the scope of protection by means of compulsory licences, FRAND-licences and similar limitations imposed by cartel and competition law.

• Concept of IP-law
• The legal sources (TRIPS, WIPO-Treaties, EU-Regulations and Directives)
• The distinct IP-rights: patent, utility model, trademark, design & copyright
• The impact of competition law on intellectual property protection
• Contractual exploitation of IPRs (transfer and licence agreement)
• Enforcement of IP-rights (remedies and procedural strategies)

• Concept and different forms of companies
• Public international law of companies
• Private international law of companies
• Comparative company law
• Companies in international dispute resolution

• Cahn, Andreas/Donald, David C.: Comparative Company Law, 2nd edition, Cambridge 2020, Cambridge University Press
• Gerner-Beuerle, Carsten/Anderson Schillig, Michael: Comparative Company Law, Oxford 2018, Oxford University Press
• Kraakman, Reinier et al.: The Anatomy of Corporate Law, 3rd edition, Oxford 2017, Oxford University Press

This course aims at studying the law of international sales agreements based on the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG), which entered into force in 1988 and today has almost eighty Contracting States world-wide. It is the most important uniform private law Convention in practice, covering potentially more than 80% of global trade. Since the CISG was influenced by both the common law and civil law systems of contract law, the course will furthermore, focus on the basic principles of the law of contract of both systems in a comparative approach, where appropriate.

✓ Scope of application of the CISG
✓ Hierarchy between the CISG and national sales law provisions
✓ Interpretation of the CISG and the aim of uniform application
✓ Formation of contracts under the CISG
✓ Obligations of the seller and the buyer
✓ Remedies in case of non‐ performance
✓ Damages under the CISG
✓ Relationship between the CISG and other current/future uniform law instruments

The International Trade Law course seeks to familiarize students with the numerous legal issues that commonly arise in the context of the trade in goods and services between and among nations. In addition, the course provides students with the economic theories underlying international trade and the history of international trade. The areas of coverage during the course include the following:

• The theory of „comparative advantage“ developed and popularized by the Eighteenth Century British economist, David Ricardo, along with subsequent critiques and modifications of this theory.
• The beginnings of trade between nations beginning in ancient times and its expansion, development and increasing sophistication during the subsequent centuries.
• The continuing conflict between the principles and practices of „free trade“ and those of „mercantilism,“ sometimes described as „import substitution.“
• The development of free trade agreements („FTAs“) during the previous 300 years and the relatively recent phenomenon of „trade blocs“ and „customs unions“ involving groups of nations pursuing common economic and political objectives. Examples of these latter types of trade combinations are the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations („ASEAN“)
• The establishment of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade („GATT“) after World War II and its transformation into the World Trade Organization („WTO“) in 1995.
• The structure, operations and goals of the WTO and the various trade agreements that bind all WTO members („Multilateral Agreements“) and those agreements that only bind those nations acceding to their terms („Plurilateral Agreements“).
• The future of the WTO and trade blocs in the Twenty-First Century.

The course provides an introduction to “law and economics” (also known as the “economic analysis of law”), i.e. the application of concepts and methods from economics to legal problems.
Legal methodology does not offer the tools to describe or predict human behaviour. When interpreting legal provisions in light of their real world purpose or when conduction functional legal comparisons knowledge on how the law affect human behaviour is indispensable. Economics provides a behavioural theory to predict how people respond to laws. In this course, we will apply this theory to consider the respective effect of diverging interpretations of legal rules. This will allow us to fine-tune legal interpretations to the goals that the law promotes or the purpose it serves.

Foundations of law and economics
✓ What individuals strive for: Utility maximization under constraints
✓ What society strives for: Pareto and Kaldor-Hicks efficiency

Property law and economics
✓ Why we need property rights: The Coase Theorem and the Tragedy of the commons
✓ Why we need intellectual property rights: Fostering innovation

Tort law
✓ Why we need tort law: Minimizing accident costs
✓ Comparing the effects on behaviour of negligence liability vs. strict liability

Contract law
✓ Why we need contract law: Minimizing transaction costs
✓ Why we need laws against fraud: Avoiding a Market for Lemons
✓ The effect of legal remedies on contract performance: The concept of efficient breach of contract