The course Admiralty and Air Transport is designed at giving the students an overview of the key issues involved in international transport (for example, key parties, terms and issues), in the context of the overall master’s program. The international transport law module closely investigates the ill-fated voyage of the MV "OCEAN WORRIER" and thereby gives an understanding of some of the important legal issues surrounding the international carriage of goods.

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The legal systems of different countries resemble each other in some ways, but, despite the globalization that has taken place in the past years, are still significantly different.  Attorneys and businesspeople in different countries are often unaware that legal structures and concepts that they take for granted in their home countries are not shared elsewhere.  An awareness of these similarities and differences is particularly important for attorneys and businesspeople working in the international arena.  The Comparative Law course introduces students to the differences and similarities in the concepts, organization, and functioning of national legal systems.

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In the past 25 years, international arbitration has become a major method of international dispute resolution. Despite this popularity, many lawyers and businesspeople remain unclear as to exactly what international arbitration is and how it differs from court-based litigation. Whereas the International Arbitration I course addresses topics regarding the nature of arbitration, arbitration agreements and arbitration institutions, the International Arbitration II course focuses on the creation of arbitration awards, where and how those awards can be challenged, and the recognition and enforcement of arbitration awards.  Prerequisite for the International Arbitration II course is either the Arbitration I course, some background in arbitration, or permission of the instructor.

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In a great majority of international business transactions, parties perform successfully the agreements they have made through contract. However, when difficulties arise, contract parties - as well as parties to non-contractual international claims - often seek redress through national courts. The International Litigation I courses addresses the sources of international litigation law and its basic principles in Europe and the United States. The course focuses on the question of which court has jurisdiction to hear a case, i.e., on jurisdiction to prescribe, as well as on personal and subject-matter jurisdiction. Special attention is given to tools employed in international litigation to either regulate jurisdiction in advance (forum selection clauses) or to avoid having to litigate before an "unfavourable" court (antisuit injunctions, claims for a declaration of non-liability). 

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Whereas International Litigation I focuses on national court systems and their jurisdiction in resolving international disputes, the International Litigation II course addresses, initially, the actual procedure involved in bringing claims against parties in another jurisdiction. Topics here include the service of process (how a party properly gives notice to another party of a claim) and the use of discovery (the obtaining of information from other parties, and even non-parties, to the litigation). An understanding of these procedures - especially before agreements are concluded - can aid parties in foreseeing potential issues and thus prevent them from arising. 

The second part of the course is devoted to the enforcement of foreign judgments. As a crucial factor in making a decision to start litigation is always whether a future judgment can be enforced against the judgment debtor should the latter not be willing to comply with the judgment voluntarily, the class will address the concepts and difficulties underlying the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments in Europe. In addition, various European and other international efforts to facilitate the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments will be considered.

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This course addresses the principal business and legal issues in cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions, including forms and techniques of combining two businesses, takeover defenses, successor liability, negotiation, pricing and other economic terms, due diligence, issuance of securities, duties of managers, corporate governance and social issues (especially important outside the United States).  The assigned reading covers the basic business and legal issues most frequently encountered in Mergers and Acquisitions of two companies across national borders.

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Corporate Governance questions typically arise when a business is getting more mature, is constantly growing and/or is getting more and more characterized by a rather dispersed ownership. In all these cases, the (executive) directors’ fiduciary duties as well as the tasks and rights of those controlling the management (non-executive directors, members of the supervisory board, shareholders) are gaining importance.

The course will focus on corporate governance in (listed) stock corporations and will deal in detail with the German Corporate Governance Code. Major issues discussed range from the monitoring role of individual and institutional shareholders, legal rules concerning the transparency of the corporation, liability of the management, the business judgment rule and the legal framework for direct and derivative suits to the role of the auditors of the corporation and the rights and duties of the supervisory board. As corporate governance today must be seen in a comparative context, recent international trends will be taken into account. The reading material will contain a number of European and US case studies as prominent examples of corporate failures. 

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Patent law determines to what extent technical innovations may be used and monopolized by one person or company in exclusion of others. This course examines the legal requirements to obtain a patent, for which developments a patent is available, the legal effects of a patent, how patents are enforced under German law and under the European Patent Convention and the attack and defense strategies in a patent litigation. It will be examined how patent application strategies, complementary know-how protection and patent litigation can be used to maximize the value of a company's research and development. These topics will be studied on the basis of several practical examples.

In a second part of the course, the law on IP licensing and the provisions of license agreements will be studied on the basis of several practical examples. This part of the course will deal with the rights and obligations of the licensor and the licensee under a license agreement, the statutory limits of license agreements, in particular under European competition law, and on the structure of international license agreements.

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In order to navigate a company in a financial crisis, the captain must know the threatening shallows. The course is for this reason divided into two parts. Firstly, an overview of the German corporate insolvency law will be given covering the following three topics: (i) the main insolvency proceedings, e.g. liquidation, insolvency plan and self-management; (ii) the interaction between the insolvency administrator, the company and its creditors (including enforcement and directors’ liabilities); and (iii) international insolvency law (in particular, the EU-Insolvency Regulations). After studying the law of insolvency, the second part of the course deals with the challenges and opportunities of a successful restructuring implemented in order to stabilize the company and to preserve value outside of insolvency proceedings. This part will focus on a financial restructuring using the typical tools such as standstills, fresh money, debtor warrants and debt equity swaps. Case studies will be conducted for this part. Students are encouraged to actively participate in class by making contributions as regards the insolvency law and restructuring experiences from their own jurisdictions.

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