News Release

Two young legal scholars honored with Baker & McKenzie Award 2015

Exceptional dissertations on intellectual and industrial property law and financial market supervision in the US

Grant and Award Announcement

Goethe University Frankfurt

Jenny Gesley, Goethe University Frankfurt

image: Jenny Gesley. view more 

Credit: GU

Frankfurt/Main, June 9, 2016 - On Thursday, law students Anja Becker and Jenny Gesley will receive the 2015 Baker & McKenzie Award for the best dissertations in commercial law at Goethe University in Frankfurt. The two winners will receive the award during the doctoral awards ceremony at the law department. The Award, which has been given to the authors of exceptional dissertations and professorial theses in the area of commercial law every year since 1988, is given alongside a monetary prize of EUR 6,000.

Anja Becker convinced the jury with her dissertation on "Coordination of proceedings in transnational intellectual and industrial property law disputes" (Verfahrenskoordination bei transnationalen Immaterialgüterrechtsstreitigkeiten). Intellectual and industrial property law is about "intellectual property", which includes patent law, copyright law and trademark law. The awardee examined the question of how parallel, yet related, proceedings can be coordinated, a topic of relevance where intellectual and industrial property law and international private and civil proceedings law intersect. "On the whole, Anja presented a thesis displaying top-notch reasoning on all levels of scientific legal work. This applies to the interpretation of the Brussels Ibis Regulation, the systematization of different case groups from a comparative perspective and last but not least, the prospect of future improvements in the coordination of transnational intellectual and industrial property law disputes", says Prof. Dr. Alexander Peukert, the Chair for Civil Law and Commercial Law at Goethe University and academic supervisor of the award-winning thesis.

Jenny Gesley's thesis "Financial markets supervision in the U.S. National developments and international standards" (Die Aufsicht über die Finanzmärkte in den USA. Nationale Entwicklungen und internationale Vorgaben) conveys a clear and concise impression of the efforts made by U.S. Americans to avert hazards originating from the financial markets with the help of legal measures, says Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Helmut Siekmann, academic supervisor of this thesis. He is Deputy Managing Director of the Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS) of the House of Finance and holder of the Endowed Chair of Money, Currency and Central Bank Law at Goethe University. He referred to the thesis as an "impressive accomplishment", stating that, "it is in fact partially on a par with a professorial thesis". By consistently pursuing her chosen approach based on historical development, Jenny Gesley had successfully managed to present comprehensive findings for financial markets as a whole.

All dissertations that focus on aspects of commercial law and have been granted "summa cum laude" honors are taken into consideration for the Baker & McKenzie Award each year, as well as professorial theses on aspects of commercial law that were written within an academic year. "By sponsoring the award, we emphasize our close ties with Goethe University and how important the promotion of young legal talent is to our law firm," says Dr. Christian Reichel, member of the management team of Baker & McKenzie Germany and Austria who will hand over the award to the two winners. The law firm has been sponsoring students of Goethe University in the National Scholarship Program from its creation, and Baker & McKenzie attorneys have a long tradition of teaching there.

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