The German law on employees' inventions requires employees to report to their employer any invention made in relation with the work contract. An employer claiming the right to the invention is obliged to pay a compensation to the employee. Up to now, this compensation is a matter of...

We analyze the legal reform concerning employees' inventions in Germany. Using a simple principal-agent model, we derive a unique efficient payment scheme: a bonus which is contingent on the project value. We demonstrate that the old German law creates inefficient incentives. However, the new...

Dieser Beitrag analysiert die geplante und zum Teil schon verwirklichte Reform des Gesetzes über Arbeitnehmererfindungen (ArbEG). Im Mittelpunkt der Analyse stehen die Vergütungen, die Arbeitgeber an einen Mitarbeiter zu zahlen haben, wenn sie dessen Erfindung in Anspruch nehmen. Bisher wurde...

This paper analyzes the impact of FORIS contracts on litigation and settlement decisions using a simple divergent-expectations model. A FORIS contract introduces contingent fee arrangements under the British legal cost allocation rule: the plaintiff pays a percentage of his settlement or trial...

By a proposal to introduce a harmonized "droit de suite", the European Comission intends to improve the economic situation of young artists. A simple price theoretical argument shows that this goal is not likely to be reached. In addition to this, the paper analyzes the efficiency of a legal...

Law and economics in Germany was dominated by regulation, competition, and 'German Ordnungspolitik' until the early 1970s. Since then, German scholars have published a broad body of work in German and in the English language, covering fields like contract law, environmental law, labor law,...