The following is a guest post by Eva Dauke, a foreign law intern working with Foreign Law Specialist Jenny Gesley at the Global Legal Research Directorate of the Law Library of Congress. Eva has previously contributed posts on Anniversary of the German Basic Law – German Constitutions in the Course of Time, Empowering Financial Innovation: Regulation of Crowdfunding in the European Union, and an FALQ post on the European Parliament Elections.
Disruptive innovations play a big role in transforming industries and markets. Germany defines disruptive innovations as “innovations that replace or substantially change existing products, technologies, or business models with novel approaches and thereby create new market opportunities and value creation potential, or that can solve important technological, social, or ecological problems.” (SPRIND Freedom Act, § 1, para. 2.) The German Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovations (Bundesagentur für Sprunginnovationen, SPRIND) was established in 2019 to identify and develop research ideas with disruptive potential for the German federal government and for funding them.
In January 2024, the Global Legal Research Directorate of the Law Library of Congress published a report titled Germany: Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation Freedom Act which provides an overview of the new German SPRIND Freedom Act enacted in December 2023 and its goals and intended effects. In the past, the SPRIND management was not empowered to make decisions regarding the financing of disruptive projects independently; it required the approval of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The SPRIND Freedom Act’s objective is to enhance and refine the financial and legal framework for the agency. In particular, it permits SPRIND to invest in and fund projects in its own name without the federal government’s involvement. It also introduces the possibility of self-administration of up to 30% of public funding and facilitates the recruitment of necessary specialists.
We invite you to review the information provided in our report, here.
The report is an addition to the Law Library’s Legal Reports (Publications of the Law Library of Congress) collection, which includes over 4,000 historical and contemporary legal reports covering a variety of jurisdictions, researched and written by foreign law specialists with expertise in each area. To receive alerts when new reports are published, you can subscribe to email updates and the RSS feed for Law Library Reports (click the “subscribe” button on the Law Library’s website). The Law Library also regularly publishes articles related to technology in the Global Legal Monitor.
Subscribe to In Custodia Legis – it’s free! – to receive interesting posts drawn from the Law Library of Congress’s vast collections and our staff’s expertise in U.S., foreign, and international law.