Enforcement of Unfair Competition Law by Notice of Violation, Rights of Consumers and Public Authorities – Comparative Evaluation of the German Status Quo

Joseph Straus has devoted his entire professional life to the protection of intellectual property, above all the protection of patent rights. He is the father of the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center (MIPLC) — an institution, whose Master of Intellectual Property Law Program has developed into one of the foremost education programs for students from all over the world.¹ Some of its graduates are now pursuing their doctorate degrees.² As a member of the Managing Board, it has been my pleasure to have been allowed to help with the development of the center.

Enforcing intellectual property law and unfair competition law is a current issue, affecting not only the People's Republic of China, but also Europe. The European legislator reacted and adopted a directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights. However, a corresponding directive for the enforcement of unfair competition law has yet to be brought forward. Andreas Heinemann and I have been editors of a project analyzing the law of fifteen Member States of the European Union on a comparative law basis. The aim of the project was to examine the advantages and the disadvantages of the different methods of enforcement of competition law. The following article is based on this study. Some of the study's conclusions will be delved into further to rebut, with the help of a comparative law perspective, assertions that have been made in a national context.