History
After years of negotiations, the Center was inaugurated at a Founding Ceremony on March 17, 2003. With the generous cooperation of the Bavarian Ministry for Science, Research and the Arts, the four partners were able to gain formal approval of the Master’s Program in Intellectual Property in record time. At the same time, we were busy recruiting faculty from all over the world, finalizing the administrative details of the program, and beginning to advertise for students. By October, we had been able to attract students from eight countries located on five continents.
In August 2004, 13 students of our first class graduated from MIPLC, with the University of Augsburg conferring the "Master of Laws" degree. Our first academic year – despite all teething problems of this ambitious new endeavour – had ended successfully. In the second academic year, our enrollment rose to 18 students from 13 countries. Additionally, the MIPLC LL.M. program was selected to contribute to the further education of seven ASEAN scholars, who joined the program for the winter term 2004/05 in the framework of the ECAP program. By 2008, we were able to enrol 30 new students for the first time. The current class of 2009/10 holds 31 students from 17 nations.
Looking back, we are proud to have attracted so many qualified students with such diverse backgrounds and countries of origin:
We are indebted to numerous people for their critical contributions to this new venture. From the very beginning, the leaders of the four MIPLC partners showed their firm commitment to this unique cooperation, and handled complicated issues skillfully and flexibly. Without that skill and flexibility, and without the friendly and helpful approach of the Bavarian Ministry for Science, Research and the Arts, we could never have started the LL.M. program in the fall of 2003, a mere six months after the Center had been created.
And of course, without our more than 70 faculty members, we would not have been able to create such a diverse and multifaceted program. Not least because of their continuous commitment to the MIPLC program, their dedicated lectures guarantee the quality of education the MIPLC offers. Also, we thank our academic tutors, who, by conducting the weekly one-to-one tutorial sessions with their students, make an important contribution to the quality of our LL.M. program.
On this basis we are looking forward to the development of the current and future academic years and strive to continuously improve the quality of our program by even more increasing the interconnectedness of the courses, by adapting the courses to the needs of the students, and, not the least, by offering new courses.
