Field of Research

Commercial Law
The topic of research regarding commercial law was aimed on companies limited by shares law. The main focus of interest herein was upon organizational law respectively the constitution of companies limited by shares, whereby the rights and duties of organs are a further specialization, without leaving public law, as well as criminal law unconsidered. In addition to this, company law relating to groups was a second corner stone which extended the research activities of the chair. The field of academic work was rounded up by the consideration of the European commercial law. Within this fast developing area, the scope of the department’s work reached from European commercial law, with its arising questions of the SE-Statute up to the international commercial law, which as an intersection of cooperative law (freedom of establishment), international private law and national commercial law withheld an enormous explosiveness.

Capital Market Law
The legal aspects regarding the regulation of electronic trading systems and market places as an element of capital market law offered a for the chair absolutely suitable area of research. In addition to this the stock exchange organization law in its further sense, as well as the implementation of the European law– herein essentially the free movement of capital – was not left out of sight.

Multimedia- and Telecommunication Law
The scope of multimedia, respectively information law was marked by the widely spread effects and the fast growing importance of the information technology, which in principle was characterized as a cross section matter. The in connection with the meanwhile often used slogan – information society – rising jurisdictional problems do not only touch the classical surroundings of civil, criminal or public law, but also intensify the clash of the conflict of laws provisions in an up to date unknown matter.
According to the orientation of the chair its leader was occupied within the academic field of multimedia law i.e., with questions concerning civil law. Another main focus was within the conflict of laws. Regarding the main field work, the questions in detailed that had been worked on were:

• Convergence of Media as a legal problem
• Liability for Information in the Internet (i.e., concerning copyright, competition law and personal rights)
• Problems regarding copyright and online presentation, the circulation of information holding copyrights (so-called peer-to-peer-systems) and software
• Arrangements, consumer protection law, bank law, as well as problems regarding the digital signature.
• Questions concerning data protection law of E-Commerce
• Software contract law, i.e. in combination with the Open-Source-Model
• Contract law of telecommunication
• International Private Law / Conflict Law in the online surroundings

Environmental Law
This concerns law concerning protection against harmful effects on the environment through air pollution, noise, vibrations and similar factors and security law of plants. The focus mainly was upon the intersection between company law and contract law on the one hand and environmental law on the other hand, caused by the splitting of former company units of the chemical industry, e.g., the former Hoechst AG, into so-called chemical parks with a various amount of operators. Within this framework the chair was involved in a couple of projects.

Fundamental Legal Research
A further scientific field of the chair was in the area of fundamental legal research to which i.e. the new institutional economics count, as well as the economic analysis of law.

The New Institutional Economics (NIÖ) deals with the economic analysis of institutional surroundings and the institutional arrangements of economy and the basic thought that the determinations and using of institutions and organizations cause costs, so-called transaction costs, which have an influence on the entire economic results. The NIÖ examines the reactions of legal and organizational general frameworks on the real life and the efficient arrangements in order to achieve an optimized transaction costs structure between the parties, and also between governmental institutions and citizens.

The Economic Analysis of Law (ÖAR) judges the consequences of legal general frameworks i.e. of legal norms and judicial decisions with the assistance of the criteria of economical efficiency and gives suggestions of how to organize law so that economically efficient results may be reached. The ÖAR also handles the mechanisms that can lead to changing rights; as well it examines the functioning of justice and possible improvements of its functionality.

Tort Law and Contract Law
Among the surroundings of the common civil law, i.e., the tort law forms a point of main emphasis of research within its whole, as well as the product liability law. A main focus also was on the wide field of medical practitioner’s liability and medical jurisprudence. At the same time the chair holder was occupied with questions of the “AGB” (general terms and conditions of trade or business), as well as the impact through the use of modern information technology on the civil law, whereby especially the contract and liability law were the center of interest. Legal questions regarding online banking or internet auctions are to be mentioned as an example.

Mediation
An especially appropriate and innovative means of resolving disputes outside of the court system which has gained on interest within the past years. Compared with the usual court procedures the Mediation has various advantages, i.e. saving time and money, gaining confidence among the parties, flexibility within the negotiations und the results, as well as the acceptance of the results by all parties.

Right of Open Source
Open source software has been able to gain a significant market share in the software market in recent years. Due to the growing prevalence, especially in the area of commercial use, the legal issues in this area are increasing. The project "Law of Open Source Software" deals with the current developments in the field of open source software and presents them, together with supplementary materials.

Open Access Law
A presented work entitled "Legal Framework of Open Access" offers an introduction to the alternative publication model Open Access and examines the legal and factual questions involved. Essentially, the efforts under the slogan "Open Access" call for the goal of making publicly funded research on the internet available to anyone free of charge.
The study is designed as a practitioner's guide and is intended to help authors who themselves are seeking an open access publication. This open access guideline was developed as part of the interdisciplinary research project Mediaconomy of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, in the course of which various problems of Internet economics were analyzed.