Germany: Strategy

The German automotive industry is facing its biggest crisis in decades.

Over the last few years disruption has become a constant challenge for businesses. Volatility has become ingrained, putting companies on the back foot as they react in piecemeal fashion to unforecastable shocks.

With the RESourceEU Action Plan, the European Commission is providing a key industrial policy impetus to secure critical raw materials in Europe.

European financial regulators are advancing major reforms across sustainable finance disclosure, investment firm risk management, and ESG ratings oversight. From stricter sustainability reporting requirements under SFDR 2.0 to streamlined fund reporting frameworks and new endorsement rules for third-country ESG ratings, these developments signal a significant shift in regulatory expectations for asset managers, investment firms, and rating providers operating in EU markets.

Europa erlebt einen sicherheitspolitischen Paradigmenwechsel - mit gravierenden Konsequenzen weit über die Rüstungsbranche hinaus. Nele Frie und David Peroz analysieren, wie die strategische Neuausrichtung der europäischen Verteidigungspolitik Investorenperspektiven verändert, die Kapitalmärkte bewegt und die Debatte um nachhaltige Finanzregulierung neu entfacht.

The German automotive industry is facing its biggest crisis in decades.

A European Patent Office Board of Appeal decision examines whether an interactive kiosk that randomly prints literary content based on user button presses constitutes a patentable technical invention.

The European Patent Office refused to grant a patent for a method of developing rod patterns in nuclear reactors based on simulation, ruling that the claimed features do not produce a technical effect. This decision examines whether simulation results for reactor design constitute technical contributions when the rod patterns are not directly implemented in actual reactors and may have non-technical uses such as study purposes.

A European patent application for a method of estimating departure times for scheduled events was refused by the Technical Board of Appeal. The Board found that effects resulting from modified business schemes cannot contribute to technical character, and that inherent effects from computer implementation are insufficient without achieving a "further" technical effect beyond normal computational processes.