The sole members of the Collaboration Platform as a public-law corporation (Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts, KöR) are the alliance partners, which are legal entities of public law themselves, but not their respective individual members. To avoid any difficulties in distinguishing them from the members of the partner institutions, the term "partners" is used in the KöR law instead of "members" to refer to the alliance partners. The legal form of KöR was chosen for the Collaboration Platform to provide it with a transparent and sustainable structure, facilitating collaborations among the alliance partners while maintaining a degree of operational independence from them.