For more than 30 years, the GRUR has specifically promoted scientific projects at universities and at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition. The financial resources required for this come from the so-called Science Fund. The science fund is a single item in GRUR's annual budget. It is mainly fed by the surpluses that GRUR generates in connection with the journals of the GRUR family - these are the journals GRUR, GRUR-RR, GRUR-Prax and GRUR-International - as well as with the collection of judgements GRUR-RS.

Anyone who has an idea for an external scientific project that is eligible and worthy of funding can submit a funding application to the Scientific Committee and submit it via the GRUR office. The Scientific Committee has the task of collecting the funding applications and carrying out an initial review to determine whether the applications comply with the formalities, whether they are coherent and whether they are eligible and worthy of funding. It then bundles the applications into a table presentation and submits them to the Executive Committee, which decides after deliberation.

The following persons are members of the Science Committee:

Dr. Julia Blind, Avantcore Attorneys at Law, Stuttgart
Dipl.-Phys. Sven-Erik Braitmayer, DTS, Munich
Prof. Dr. Alexander Bulling, DREISS Patent Attorneys, Stuttgart
Prof. Dr. Ruth Janal, LL.M., University of Bayreuth
Prof. Dr. Lea Katharina Kumkar, University of Trier
Prof. Dr. Matthias Leistner, LMU Munich
Prof. Dr. Axel Metzger, Humboldt University, Berlin
Dr. Gunnar Baumgärtel, Treasurer of GRUR (as advisory member without voting rights)

You can contact the members of the Scientific Committee via the following email:
wissenschaftsausschuss@grur.de

Before submitting an application, please be sure to read the GRUR's funding guidelines, which you can download below.

Funding Guidelines:
The Scientific Committee has provided special overviews to help you successfully submit your application or proposal for those individuals and institutions who wish to submit an application for dissertation printing subsidies or an application for literature cost subsidies, or who wish to propose a dissertation for one of the categories of the "GRUR Dissertation Awards". You can download these below.

Contact person at the office (initial consultation):
Ms Marina Kreis (m.kreis@grur.de), Tel.: 0221-78959-330

• Dr Jonathan Pukas receives the GRUR Dissertation Award in the category of copyright and media law for his thesis on: “The Use of Works and Artificial Intelligence – An Analysis of and Perspectives on the Copyright Framework for Using Works as Training and Input Data for Artificial Neural Networks”
• Dr Leonie Martina Jüngels receives the GRUR Dissertation Award in the category of data and information law for her thesis on: “The Disclosure of Secrets – Criteria for Assessing the Publication of Unlawfully Obtained Information in Civil Law”
• Dr Alexander Egberts receives the GRUR Dissertation Award in the category of trademark, competition and design law for his thesis on: “Unfair Digital Choice Architectures – Foundations for a Conceptual and Competition-Law Framework for ‘Dark Patterns’ in Light of Behavioural-Economic and Interaction-Design Insights”
• Dr Mathias Scheer receives the GRUR Dissertation Award in the category of patent and utility model law for his thesis on: “The Antitrust-Law Link Between FRAND Commitments and SEPs”

(Photo: Andreas Burkhardt)