Schriften zum Europäischen und Internationalen Privat-, Bank- und Wirtschaftsrecht

New technologies have an impact on contractual relationships between stronger and more vulnerable parties, with a tendency to further widen the power gap through the use of big data. While most legal analyses focus on data protection and European law, this work takes a comparative approach to what this means for traditional contract law in Germany and Turkey.

With Regulation (EU) 2019/452, the law on investment control has been given a regulatory framework under EU law for the first time. The present work aims to systematically record the normative justification of direct investment control under the Regulation and its interconnection with the administrative law of the Member States in order to identify the system-forming elements of European foreign direct investment control.

Das Buch befasst sich mit der sog. Digitale-Inhalte-Richtlinie aus dem Jahr 2019 und ihrer Umsetzung in den zentralen europäischen Kodifikationsstrukturen Deutschland und Frankreich. Es zeichnet den Entwicklungsprozess der Richtlinie nach und umfasst zum einen ihre Entstehung und das europäische Konzept für ein Digitalvertragsrecht und zum anderen ihre Umsetzung in den mitgliedstaatlichen Rechtsordnungen.

The risk-based approach to capital markets regulation is in crisis. Climate change, shifting demographics, geopolitical conflicts and other environmental discontinuities threaten established business models and shorten the life spans of listed companies. The current rules for periodic disclosure in the EU fail to inform market participants adequately. Unlike risks, uncertainties are unquantifiable or may only be quantified at great cost, causing them to be insufficiently reflected in periodic reports. This is unfortunate, given the pivotal role capital markets must play in the economy’s adaptation to environmental discontinuities. It is only with a reformed framework for periodic disclosure, that gradual and orderly adaptation to these discontinuities appears feasible. To ensure orderly market adaptation, a new reporting format is required: scenario analysis should be integrated into the European framework for periodic disclosure.

Product governance regulations impose obligations for the design and implementation of the product development process on people who design financial instruments. This volume examines this new regulative approach that protects investors and asks in particular what impact the designer’s legally entrenched product responsibility has on his or her liability toward the end investor.

Vom Bail-out zu Bail-in: Warum hat sich dieser Übergang noch nicht vollzogen? Das Werk beleuchtet die Defizite der neuen Haftungsordnung für Bankinsolvenzen und nimmt diverse Reformansätze in den Fokus.

The Second Payment Services Directive has extensive implications for digital payment instruments such as online transfers, credit card payments, PayPal, new payment triggering services, and payments via smartphone using Google Pay or Apple Pay. The book examines these developments with a focus on contract and liability law while giving specific consideration to European law.

The book compares Brazilian and German law, thus linking an old system of civil law with one of the largest countries in the Global South that also has a long Roman legal tradition. It reliably yet innovatively explains for Brazil how constitutional, consumer, and civil law interact in the negotiation and concluding phases and help protect legitimate expectation.

This study examines the legal doctrines in the UCP Directive on Unfair Business Practices and explains the obligations of national legislators to implement them. Following a critical analysis of the 2008 and 2015 amendments to the German Act on Unfair Competition, the author argues for the transparent implementation of the Directive in a modular, systematic Act on Unfair Competition that is differentiated teleologically in material law.

This study examines third-party liability for pure financial losses in the realm of commercial law. It undertakes a comparison of the German and Italian liability systems. The civil liability principles that it develops are harmonized with the particularities of commercial law by means of two paradigmatic examples: the liability of a PartG partner and the third-party liability of rating agencies.

Despite the decisions of the European Court of Justice, many legal questions remain unresolved regarding the transnational change of legal form. With this in mind, the study compares laws governing the domestic change of legal form in Germany and Hungary. The findings serve as a basis for a more detailed consideration of transnational procedures for changing legal form within European legal frameworks.

In practice, syndicated loans touch upon legal boundaries, particular with respect to the provisions of credit security law. Three models have been developed to meet the requirements of credit security law while also assuring an insolvency-proof structure. This study assesses the success of each model in achieving these goals and offers a recommendation for the most practicable model.

The aim of the work is to analyze personal data processing in the private sphere in order to illuminate challenges and solutions for complying with the legal prerequisites of the German and European data protection laws – with a view toward preserving individual autonomy. It is questionable whether civil liability for data protection is still based on its original procedural structure.

This work illuminates the need to reconcile national corporate law, takeover law, and the European principle of the free movement of capital. It also discusses the dual role of the shareholder as a member of the corporation and capital investor while focusing specifically on the right to appoint members to the supervisory boards of listed corporations in Europe.

This work investigates the phenomenon of contractual networks and, while drawing on interdisciplinary approaches, attempts to position the issue legally, not least with a view to the dogma of contract law. It examines in particular the impacts that result from the “network character” of individual contracts, as well as the associated modifications that are necessary to individual contractual relationships.

Politicians, legislators, academics, and consumer lawyers all base their regulatory interventions on a particular concept of the consumer. These proceedings of the General Concept of the Consumer conference aim to provide an up-to-date inventory of interdisciplinary and comparative foundations and to stimulate further dialogue on consumer models, both within and between disciplines.

In her interdisciplinary dissertation, the author challenges the purely legalistic approach to civil rights discrimination protection. Using theories drawn from economics and psychology, she analyzes discrimination and asks whether and in what way the ban on civil rights discrimination actually influences such choices. On this basis, she makes a normative argument for anti–discrimination prohibitions that preserve freedom.

Special purpose entities as vehicles for securitizing assets have taken on considerable importance. BilMoG revised the regulation of the requirement for firms to issue a consolidated balance sheet as specified in § 290 HGB The model of uniform management was stricken in favor of an expansion of the concept of control. This work provides a more detailed examination of the control concept in § 290 HGB.

Arbitrators are not bound by other arbitral tribunals' awards. However, they frequently refer to prior decisions. This book explores the de facto precedential effect of arbitral awards. It also addresses the salient issues of arbitral law-making and consistency in international commercial and investment arbitration.

- examines the de facto precedential effect's requirements and qualifying factors
- develops a methodology to examine the de facto precedential effect
- analyses ICC arbitral awards concerning the extension of the arbitration agreement to other companies of the same group and international construction disputes
- analyses investment arbitration awards with regards to the notion of investment, the most-favoured-nation treatment as well as the full protection and security standard

The focus of this work is the concept of full harmonization in European private law. Using the relevant guidelines developed to date, it examines the actual scope of this concept in current practice and makes suggestions for how European Union legislators may meaningfully make use of this method. Besides the juridical challenges facing full harmonization, the study also shows the importance of its economic effects.

The voting right is the central management right of stockholders. The conditions under which stockholders exercise their voting rights have changed substantially in recent years due to the expanded use of financial instruments and the appearance of new actors. This study comprehensively examines the problems resulting from this situation for publicly listed joint stock companies and discusses solutions, both de lege lata (as the law exists today) and de lege ferenda (with a view to future law).

This dissertation attempts to compare direct debit transactions in Germany and Romania as well as Europe from the perspective of civil law. Based on this legal comparison and a consideration of European primary law, it evaluates developments at the EU level as they have been shaped by the SEPA Directive.

Diese Arbeit setzt sich mit der Bilanzierung von Finanzinstrumenten, insb. von Credit Default Swaps in der Bankbilanz, auseinander und greift die Entwicklungen durch das Bilanzrechtsmodernisierungsgesetz (BilMoG) sowie die Reformansätze der International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) auf. Dabei werden diese Bilanzregime vor dem Corporate Governance-Hintergrund divergierender Informationsnutzen von Bilanzadressaten verglichen.

This work seeks to describe the role that actors in charge of financial system oversight should play in the future to prevent a crisis similar to the current financial crisis and – should prevention fail – to mitigate its effects. Against this backdrop, the work examines the role of supranational financial supervision as part of a regionally integrated financial system.

Legal issues pertaining to groups of companies time after time appear on the regulatory agenda of the European Union in the field of company law. The author has taken the opportunity provided by the introduction of new Italian regulations for groups of companies in 2004, and suggested actions, especially the ones included in the Action Plan of the European Commission, to compare fundamental issues of company law regarding groups both in Italian and German law with European perspectives.
The Italian approach is used to identify the aspects which could turn out to be problematic in searching for European core provisions of company law addressed to groups. The - various - legal criteria determining the existence of a group or of group relations, information provisions both in internal relationships inside the group and in external relationships with third parties, sound management of the group, and regulatory issues regarding the formation of group relationships are compared by using a functional approach. The study is going through these questions also with regard to other fields of law, such as accounting legislation, information provisions of capital market law, and take over law. Additionally, the historical development as well as the actual shareholder structure and the enterprise landscape are covered by the study. The results of this broad approach represent a valuable contribution to the analysis of the regulation of groups of companies in the member states of the European Union.

This book deals with the presentation of hybrid financial instruments in financial statements (IFRS and German accounting rules/HGB). It is situated at the interface between different fields of law: contracts, company law, insolvency law, and accounting law. In addition, it contains comparisons to banking supervision law and the methodologies on hybrid capital used for credit ratings. Hybrid financial instruments are situated between equity and debt, thus the different notions of equity in public and private ordering form the core of this work.

Part 1 describes four of the most important hybrid instruments: subordinated debt, participation rights (Genussrechte), silent partnerships, and hybrid bonds. Part 2 deals with the relevance of certain contractual clauses ('modules') in capital/credit agreements, e.g. the different forms of subordination, for the users of financial statements. A deep-dive shows the effects of specific modules before and in case of insolvency of the capital recipient. Part 3 shows how the relevant information on hybrid capital is presented in financial statements (IFRS and HGB), including the proximity of an instrument to 'pure' equity or debt.

The single-tier administrative system with non-managing directors has been an option in Germany since the introduction of the Societas Europaea (SE). The particular relevance of the examination has been highlighted by recent business scandals and company crises, and also by the balance sheet scandals at the start of the millennium and the financial market crisis. Taking into account various legal systems, the liability of supervisory board members and non-managing directors is extensively discussed. From a comparative viewpoint, this publication aims to contribute to this legal discussion.

With an increasing concentration of legal harmonization and a rising number of decisions by the European Court of Justice, methodological questions, and the associated constitutional issues, are increasingly rising to the forefront. The contributions made at the second meeting of the law faculties of Athens and Bochum, held in Athens in summer 2010, address these issues and are published in this volume. The editors and authors consider the diversity of the varying perspectives of the member states and of legal sub-disciplines as advantageous and fertile grounds for the necessary and inevitable discussions of these matters at the level of European Union legislature.

This publication considers important legal questions concerning acquisition in good faith of shares and of rights to shares in a GmbH. In particular, the requirements, legal consequences and the limits of acquisition in good faith of shares and of rights to shares are specifically addressed and presented in relation to the legal questions associated with the acquisition in good faith of shares in a GmbH. This work's primary objective is to contribute to establishing clarity on the countless questions of interpretation associated with section 16 sub-section 3 of the German Limited Liability Companies Act (GmbHG).

This study by Professor Dr. Matthias Herdegen, sponsored by the Institute of Banking Law at the University of Cologne and available in English and German, is devoted to the organization of the bank supervision in the European Union in terms of European law and domestic law. The current regime of cross-border supervision and the entirety of its implications are analyzed and possible further developments de lege ferenda are examined.

As Internet use in private households continues to increase, so too do the number of consumers making purchases over the Internet. Against this background, this works considers consumer protection in the Internet with particular emphasis on the conclusion of contracts on the Internet, the company's duty to inform, the consumer's right of withdrawal, and the monitoring of general terms and conditions of Internet contracts. English and German law are presented and analyzed under consideration of the relevant European private law.

This work considers the most important EC directive in corporate law since the Take-Over Directive in 2002, i.e. the Directive on Shareholders' Rights and its implementation under German law. This is the first directive to substantially regulate the internal organization of a stock corporation and entails a series of fundamental problems from control issues and shareholder apathy to questions relating to a reasonable definition of the scope of application of the law of stock corporations and listed corporations.

Within a private law system, whose fundamental principle is private autonomy, content control raises significant and fundamental questions. Over the past few decades the trend of strengthening content control in nearly all fields of private law has become apparent. Against this backdrop and from a comparative law perspective, the authors of this volume discuss fundamental issues including historical development, the relationship between interpretation and content control, the basic legal warranty and aspects of content control in selected legal fields such as employment law, inheritance law, and international private law as well as specific questions.

The current financial crisis is preoccupying business and politics like no prior crisis. The economic effects are being felt on global, European, and national levels and are forcing governments to take extreme counter-measures. The long-term goal is not merely stabilization but rather to stabilize the financial system. System stability requires a regulatory framework that can comprehensively prevent possible future crises. For the first time at a conference held at the Humboldt-University in Berlin, leading experts from the legal and economic academic fields discussed the common effects and impact of the financial crisis on the (future) economic system.

This handbook on the new bond law provides a legal comparison to the UK covered bond. While offering a deeper understanding of structured covered bonds and the further development of national law, the work at hand also aims to contribute to the assessment of the security and benefits of covered bonds and the discussion of integration of the EU mortgagee credit markets, especially regarding the refinancing of mortgage credits through covered bonds.

The current corporate social responsibility debate on the ethical, social and ecological significance and responsibility of companies are significantly determined by two central concepts - sustainable development and shareholder value. One idea that contains both concepts is that of the socially responsible investment. How socially responsible investment works, how it is legally classified, and which regulations build the framework that allows and limits socially responsible investment are described in detail in this work.

Not many other legal fields are experiencing the kind of dynamic development like that which is currently taking place in the field of European private law. The systematic penetration of the alignment of collaborative private law has established itself as a core subject of academic debate. Taking this into account, this work examines the concretization of general clauses in European private law and especially reflects on the core issues of the legitimacy of general clauses and the methods of their concretization.

Fifty years after the Treaties of Rome were signed and especially in view of the failed constitutional referendum in France and the Netherlands on 29 May and 1 June 2005 respectively, in which the citizens of two founding countries of the ambitious Treaty rejected a unified European constitution, the question arises: what is the point of European unification? This fundamental European constitutional law question is also of great importance for the further development of European private law. Against this backdrop, this work examines the concretization competence and concretization methods in European private law.

The regulation of the capital market has been in crisis since the start of the new millennium. A series of cases of fraud and company insolvencies on a scale never before experienced in Europe and overseas has resulted in the loss of billions and shattered the trust of investors in the capital market. This work examines the legal structures of the primary market and analyses possible methods of the further development of the German Investor Protection Act based on the example of the underwriting bank or rather the underwriting syndicate, which consists of several banks.

This work considers the balancing act between employee interests and management in the law pertaining to German and Spanish stock corporations in a legally comparative manner. The determination of differences, similarities and developments are firmly supported by historical groundwork and political context.

Due to the increase in the international competition for capital, the demand for internationally comparable accounting norms has received a new impetus. The previous aim was a European-wide gradual convergence on the European and national levels but now European legislators are striving for a standardization of European Accounting Law based on the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as set forth by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). Against this backdrop, an analysis of the demands of European Account Law on foreign accounting systems is presented in this work.

Since the passage of the Prospectus Directive and the Prospectus Regulation by the European authorities in 2003, that legislation has been carefully observed by the capital markets until today. The aim of these regulations is to establish an integrated, efficient and liquid European capital market in order to protect the investors.
The author describes in detail the regulations (including the annexes) starting with the genesis of the legislation by using the comitology procedure and interprets them on the basis of the CESR recommendations. He discusses numerous practical examples (e.g. the definition of a public offering, secondary placements or employee stock option schemes) and applies his interpretation.
In a second step the author compares the results with the prospectus disclosure regime established by the Securities Act of 1933 in the United States and analyses them from an economics perspective.
On the basis of this economic analysis of law, the author shows the potential impact of the legislation on the economy and the corporations; in particular he pursues the question, whether or not the legislation meets its aims.
The research on hand is an extensive description and analysis of the Prospectus Directive and the Prospectus Regulation and provides a profound evaluation of one of the key issues of the European legislation of the past years.

This conference volume on the German-Japanese colloquium “Transformations or Erosion of Private Autonomy?” carries the debate on the subject into the area of contract law that is central to economic life.

This work provides an impressive contribution to the very latest discussions on the harmonization of European consumer contract law.

The precedents of the European Court of Justice on companies' rights of establishment have established the principle of mutual recognition (principle of country of origin) in the field of companies’ rights of establishment as well. This has led to regulatory competition between European (Member State) company laws. However, the actors in the external relationships of a company, namely the creditors, do not participate on principle in the choice of company law. An important objective of this work is therefore to examine the effect that the freedom of choice of law has for these external transaction partners of a company.

The subject of the present work is the reform of consumer credit law at European level. Following a description of the historical development and the currently valid legal situation, legal and material problems are demonstrated by means of the current legal situation. The proposed reforms for a new consumer credit directive are examined and analysed in detail.

E-Commerce is a phenomenon that threads through the whole economy. Its rapid development and the increasing importance of the Internet have led to fundamental changes in the whole services sector. This applies in particular to financial services. The work deals with the legal aspects of this development, as well as those pertaining to legal policy.

The orientation of the EC accounting directives and (in practice) the IAS/IFRS to corporations on the one hand and their extension to the limited liability company & co. on the other hand raises two questions: firstly, what is the justification for the (subsequent) inclusion of the limited liability company & co. in the EC accounting conventions, and, secondly, is it possible to subject both types of company to the same accounting rules without differentiation, i.e. regardless of their special company law features.

The more company law with choice of law is backed in Europe, the more important information becomes as a function precondition for efficient decisions. The objective of this work is to sketch a model that places information in the foreground as a concept for harmonisation in European company law and to demonstrate its practical realisation in European instruments on harmonisation of company law.

Within the system for regulating competition, banks assume a special legal position. Since the beginning of the1930's, the German legislator has assumed that the competition among banks exhibits particularities that are branch-specific and thus the freedom of competition of banks must also be regulated branch-specifically. In the course of the past forty years, the legislator has gradually dismantled freedom-restricting special provisions and widened freedom-maintaining provisions. As a result, the freedom of competition of banks is steadily approaching the freedom of competition of other businesses again.

Both the European Union and the Hague Conference on Private International Law have recently been dealing intensively with questions on conflict of laws with respect to transactions involving international securities. The common denominator of the Community regulations, and the accepted convention of the Hague Conference on December 13, 2002 concerning the law to be applied to certain rights regarding securities held with an intermediary is the replacement of the lex cartae sitae by connecting factors which focus on safe-custody accounts and the rights registered with them.

The aim of this work is to evaluate these regulations as well as the Community provisions based on section 17a of the German law on deposit of securities (§ 17a des deutschen Depotgesetzes), and to develop an individual connecting factor.

The present work compares the current control systems of shareholders' voting rights in the laws governing the German Aktiengesellschaft (stock corporation), the French société anonyme (stock corporation) and the British public limited company. The aim of this study is to bring out the existing obstacles to an effective across-the- borders voting right in the European Union and to present possible perspectives for harmonization in this area.

The work of foundations is becoming increasingly important throughout Europe in almost all areas of society. For this reason, foundations are currently experiencing an undreamt-of revival on the national level, which has led to a variety of law reform projects which will further promote the emergence and work of foundations. The reform projects, however, are often missing a dimension that extends beyond national borders. The aim of the present work is to make a contribution towards the discussion of the introduction of the set of regulations for a European foundation in the European legal area. The possible tasks and functions of such a set of regulations and its adaptation to the European legal context are demonstrated, and suggestions for the legal form of the set of regulations are elaborated.

The aim of the present work is an examination of the current liability situation against the background of the past years on the topic of issued decisions as well as the latest developments in comprehensive literature beyond legal policy considerations. The basis of any reform is a critical stock-taking. In this sense, the present examination regards itself as a contribution towards the current reform discussion.

Conflict-of-laws rules that serve as application-of-law rules are necessary everywhere where legally relevant facts and circumstances of life have points of contact with different legal systems. In classic international law of procedure this has to do with the removal of layers of applicability of national legal systems, which today is based on the question of which legal system has the closest connection to a given state of facts.

With European integration, a new independent supranational legal system has been added to the individual national legal systems, which influences national law in diverse ways.

An academic legal colloquium was held under the title ′Globalization and Law‵in Tokyo in September/October 2005. The present volume is published in German and Japanese and is a starting-point for academics in both countries.

The author introduces the various provisions of the European Sales Law, describes them and examines the extent to which they can be understood as an ordered whole: as a system of European sales law. In addition, he reveals the underlying legal policy guidelines discussed by the literature and describes them using economic theory. It becomes apparent that European Sales Law is to be understood primarily as law that seeks to ensure the functional conditions of the market and competition, and that seeks to support the integration of the single European market.

The author examines the legal questions arising from the fact, that not all member states of the European Union belong to the Eurozone. More than seven years after the introduction of the Euro and more than twelve years after the Treaty of Maastricht introduced the provisions on the Economic and Monetary Union in the EC-Treaty, these questions are only seldom examined in legal literature. The author tries to fill this gap.

A symposium entitled “Protecting Investors through Capital Market Legislation” was held in November 2004 on the occasion of the 65th birthday of Eberhard Schwark. This focussed on the developments of capital market legislation in Germany and Europe. The contributions of this symposium mirror the present volume. The “Practical Seminar for Bank and Capital Market Legislation” established by Mr. Schwark at the Humboldt University of Berlin was held from November 2004 until February 2005. The seminar gives students the opportunity to listen to external experts from real life as well as professors from other universities and to discuss a contemporary subject with them. Two contributions from this presentation complete the present volume.

The European Community’s directives regarding consumer contract law present national legislators with the challenge of implementing the European targets into their national private law systems. Although in recent times a certain tendency towards implementing consumer contract law (right) in the general private law codification is perceivable, there is (still) at present no European consensus on the optimal position of consumer contract law in private law system. As exemplary investigation has proven, each solution possesses inherent advantages and disadvantages. An overall evaluation, therefore, is not feasible. Instead, the systematic position of consumer contract law is to be determined on the basis of the specific development level in the respective legal order.

The delisting of stock corporations is still widely unregulated in Germany, notwithstanding the apparent conflict of interests between majority and minority shareholders. Specifically, the existing delisting regulation does not apply to a delisting effected by means of a corporate law transaction such as a merger. This treatise develops a new approach in order to reconcile the conflicting interests. Contrary to the prevailing view, the treatise recognizes a need for the protection of minority shareholders only to the extent that they suffer an actual loss of liquidity as a result of the delisting.

[Withdrawal from the Organized Capital Market (Delisting). A simultaneous investigation into investor protection under capital market law in relation to shareholder protection under corporate law based on the interpretation of Section 38 IV German Securities Act (Börsengesetz)]
Voluntary withdrawal from the organized capital market (delisting) is the subject of intense discussion. The discussion is primarily rooted in the Macrotron decision of the German Federal Supreme Court, the importance of which extends far beyond that case. Based on his experience gained in his corporate law practice and his work for an exchange regulatory authority, the author develops approaches for interpreting and solving the dogmatic and practical problems raised by this decision, by already taking into account the German Corporate Integrity and Modernization of Investor Protection Act (Gesetz zur Unternehmensintegrität und Modernisierung des Anfechtungsrechts - UMAG) and the Capital Investor Representative Proceedings Act (Kapitalanleger-Musterverfahrensgesetz - KapMuG). The author thus places delisting in the context of the European competition between the exchanges or between exchange and non-exchange securities markets while giving consideration to current developments in European capital market law and the treatment of delisting in other countries. The core of the article is coping with the juxtaposition of corporate and capital market regulations as well as remedies from an overarching view of exchange, takeover, and corporate law. The author develops a concept for handling this problem, which, beyond delisting, can enrich the understanding of the relationship between corporate and capital market law. The results of this reflection, as well as considerations of constitutional doctrine, thus give cause to critically question the Federal Supreme Court's Macrotron decision.

This study provides a detailed description of the juridicial system of money transfer using the banking system within the People's Republic of China. A definitive analysis of the legal frame work of Chinese money transfer is given as well as a concise and succint overview of the development of banking in China and of payment transactions.

Methodology questions for European law, and for European civil law in particular, are presented systematically and comprehensively in the convention volume. In addition to basic principles - legal comparison and economic theory - the authors discuss methodology questions for primary and secondary law as well as for the member state (implementation) law. At the same time, the presentation is not limited to an abstract presentation of the basic questions: In a particular section, academics and practitioners of European law apply themselves to methodology questions in individual legal areas - contract, labor, company and capital market law on the one hand, and methodology questions in the case law of the European Supreme Court and the German Federal Supreme Court on the other hand. The work as a whole thus connects a deep examination of methodology questions with the exemplary consolidation of individual legal areas and institutions.

[The Interpretation and Control of the Safeguarding Agreement]

The interpretation and contextual control of copyright safeguarding agreements play a substantial role in court practice. That's why for one thing disputes between authorized parties and copyright collecting companies can evolve. And for another thing, interpretation and control also play an important role for the users of protected works or ancillary copyrights, since they require clarity as to whether they must acquire the necessary rights from the copyright collecting company or the authorized parties themselves.

The author investigates the interpretation rules of copyright and the law of contract as well as the control circumstances of the copyright law, the copyright safeguarding law, the civil code (AGB [general terms & conditions] control), the law against restraints of competition as well EC antitrust (cartel) law. Informed through a legal practice on the one hand, and on the other hand on the basis of his scholastic works in the realm of German and European law of contract, commercial law and copyright, the author develops a system in which the different circumstances of interpretation and control merge into an orderly whole.

The dogmatic of prevailing law is in the foreground. Moreover, the author also discusses legal policy issues in view of the national law and the Community law. They are now of great relevance to the present, because the Commission of the European Community has announced the establishment of a European safeguarding right with their notification for "Safeguarding of copyrights and related protective rights in the internal market" from April 16th, 2004.