Multiplicative lattices: maximal implies prime and related questions

The goal of this paper is to deepen the study of multiplicative lattices in the sense of Facchini, Finocchiaro and Janelidze. We provide a sort of Prime Ideal Principle that guarantees that maximal implies prime in a variety of cases (among them the case of commutative rings with identity). This result is used to study the lattice theoretic counterpart of multiplicative closed sets, that of m-systems. The notion of m-system is also studied from the topological point of view.