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Bechtold, Stefan, Prof.

Bechtold

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Prof. Dr. Stefan Bechtold
Full Professor at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences
  • IFW E 47.2
  • +41 44 632 26 70
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Professur f. Intellectual Property
Haldeneggsteig 4
8092 Zürich
Switzerland

Biography

Stefan Bechtold is Professor of Intellectual Property and Associate Vice President IP Policy at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. His research interests include intellectual property, internet, privacy, telecommunications, and antitrust law, law & technology, as well as law & economics. He was a Visiting Professor at external pageNew York University School of Law (2014 & 2022) and the external pageUniversity of Haifa, a Senior Research Fellow at the external pageMax Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, and spent research visits in Amsterdam, Berkeley, Chicago, Munich, Singapore, and Stanford (2025).

Stefan Bechtold is a member of the foundation board of the external pageStudy Center Gerzensee (a foundation of the Swiss National Bank), where he is involved in the organization of law & economics courses for doctoral students. He is also an affiliated faculty member of the ETH AI Center, a member of the external pageAcademic Advisory Board of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, advising the ministry on all issues of economic policy, a board member of the external pageSociety for Empirical Legal Studies, and an Advisor to the external pageCopyright Project of the external pageAmerican Law Institute. From 2018 to 2021, he was Head of the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences at ETH Zurich.

Stefan Bechtold has published in journals such as the American Journal of Comparative Law; Journal of Empirical Legal Studies; Journal of Law, Economics & Organization; Southern California Law Review; Harvard Journal of Law & Technology; Marketing Science; Journal of Behavioral Decision Making; Communications of the ACM; Indiana Law Journal; HotNets Proceedings; and various European law journals. He is a graduate of the external pageUniversity of Tübingen School of Law, Germany, and of external pageStanford Law School (JSM 2002). In his youth, Stefan Bechtold composed numerous orchestral and chamber music works which have been awarded several composition prizes and have been repeatedly performed and broadcast.

 

Research Overview

(As of August 2023)

In general, my research interests include intellectual property, internet, privacy, telecommunications, law & technology, and antitrust policy. My current research is heavily influenced by methodological approaches stemming from social science, in particular empirical, experimental and machine learning approaches in law & economics.

I am interested in expanding the theoretical framework underlying intellectual property law, and in applying novel tools to intellectual property research. Examples include "external pageIntellectual Property and the Manufacture of Aura" (with Chris Sprigman), where we explore ways in which intellectual property protects authenticity; and "Automating Abercrombie: Machine-Learning Trademark Distinctiveness" (with Shivam Adarsh, Elliott Ash, Bartin Beebe & Jeanne Fromer), where we apply machine-learning tools to the Abercrombie test in U.S. trademark law.

Conducting experiments in the lab and field, I analyze analyze how the behavior of creators deviates from the predictions of rational choice models and what the implications for intellectual property policy are. Examples include "external pageThe Valuation of Moral Rights" (with Christoph Engel), in which we conducted a field experiment in order to analyze the value creators in the U.S. and Europe attach to moral rights in copyright law; "Moral Rights and Incentives" (with Christoph Engel), in which we conduct a field experiment on the incentive effects of moral rights; and "Intrinsic Adherence to Law: Physical versus Intellectual Property" (with Gabriel Gertsch & Martin Schonger), in which we analyze different attitudes towards physical versus intellectual property in a lab experiment.

Although privacy protection differs greatly between Europe and the United States, the Internet has contributed to a complex web of national, supra-​national and extraterritorial rules shaping global privacy policy. In the paper "external pageRegulatory Spillovers and Data Governance: Evidence from the GDPR" (with Michail Batikas, Tobias Kretschmer & Christian Peukert), we analyzed the impact of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on global trade and competition policy. In our paper "The Court Speaks, But Who Listens? Automated Compliance Review of the GDPR" (with Amit Zac, Pablo Wey, David Rodríguez Torrado & Josee María del Álamo Ramiro), we analyze compliance of Android apps with the Schrems II decision of the European Court of Justice. In an ongoing larger collaboration (with David Basin, Ahmed Bouhoula, Karel Kubíček, Filippo Lancieri, Christian Peukert & Amit Zac), we develop tools for automated compliance-checking. We also investigate how to regulate digital markets at scale, using tools from computer science and social science and applying hem to the legal system. 

Machine-learning does not only raise new challenges for regulating technology, it also provides new tools for empirical legal scholars. I am involved in research projects on both dimensions. With regard to the former dimension, our paper "Automating Abercrombie: Machine-​Learning Trademark Distinctiveness" (with Shivam Adarsh, Elliott Ash, Bartin Beebe & Jeanne Fromer) uses machine-​learning tools to automate Abercrombie distinctiveness test in U.S. trademark law. And in a larger collaboration that includes Christoph Engel, Jens Frankenreiter, Kirshna Gummadi, Moritz Hardt, Mike Livermore & Abebe Rediet, we explore large-language models in the law. With regard to the latter dimension, in a project on algorithmic explanations (with Elliott Ash, Aniket Kesari & Daniela Sele), we investigate how the eXplainable AI literature in computer science maps on to the legal debate on explainability.

With my research projects, I am targeting three audiences. My projects are directed either at the legal research community, the law & economics community or the computer science community. The projects in the latter two groups involve co-​authors from other disciplines (economics, psychology, computer science) and often lead to empirical or experimental papers. My goal for these interdisciplinary research projects is to delve into other disciplines as far as this is feasible. Over the last years, I have increasingly focused on experimental projects (in the lab, on the Internet and in the field) and on empirical projects that distill information on actual user behavior on the Internet from large datasets. More recently, I have started to explore machine-learning and natural-language processing tools in their application to intellectual property law and beyond.

Some of the interdisciplinary projects are co-​authored with (former) members of my research group, while others are with external co-​authors. Important collaborators include Philippe Aghion (Harvard University), Elliott Ash (ETH Zurich), David Basin (ETH Zurich), Chris Buccafusco (Duke University), Christoph Engel (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods), Jens Frankenreiter (Washington University in St. Louis), Krishna Gummadi (Max Planck Institute for Software Systems), Moritz Hardt (Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems), Daniel Klerman (University of Southern California), Michael Livermore (University of Virginia), Florencia Marotta-Wurgler (New York University), Adrian Perrig (ETH Zurich), Christian Peukert (HEC Lausanne), Christopher Sprigman (New York University), Katherine Strandburg (New York University), and Catherine Tucker (MIT).

Bibliography

  • external pageThe Court Speaks, But Who Listens? Automated Compliance Review of the GDPR (with Amit Zac, Pablo Wey, David Rodríguez Torrado & Jose María del Álamo Ramiro), March 2024
  • A Legal Framework for Explainable Artificial Intelligence (with Aniket Kesari, Daniela Sele & Elliott Ash), February 2024
  • Automating Abercrombie: Machine-Learning Trademark Distinctiveness (with Shivam Adarsh, Elliott Ash, Barton Beebe & Jeanne Fromer), January 2024
  • The Valuation of Moral Rights: A Field Experiment (with Christoph Engel), latest version: August 2019; earlier version: external pagePreprint 2017/4 of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, March 2017
  • Moral Rights and Incentives: A Field Experiment (with Christoph Engel)
  • How Does the GDPR Enforce Privacy? An Empirical Investigation (with David Stein & Florencia Marotta-Wurgler)
  • Copyright Term and Exponential Growth (with Daniela Sele)
  • DMA & DSA Projects (with Christian Peukert, Reinhold Kessler, Filippo Lancieri, Catherine Tucker & Amit Zac)
  • Comparative Privacy Law Projects (with Amit Zac, Adam Chilton & Raquel de Haro)
  • Privacy Intermediaries and Competition (with Amit Zac)
  • Probing Youtube's ContentID System (with Sverrir Arnórsson & Christian Peukert)
  • AI Regulation & Arbitrage (with Laura Edelson & Filippo Lancieri)
  • Legal Large Language Model (with Rediet Abebe, Ricardo Dominquez-Olmedo, Jens Frankenreiter, Christoph Engel, Krishna Gummadi, Moritz Hardt, Michael Livermore & Vedant Nanda)

Teaching

The course Intellectual Property: An Introduction introduces students to the basics of the intellectual property system and of innovation policy. Areas covered include patent, copyright, trademark, design, know-how protection, open source, and technology transfer. The course looks at Swiss, European, U.S. and international law and uses examples from a broad range of technologies. Insights can be used in academia, industry or start-ups.

The seminar Big Data, Law & Policy introduces students to societal perspectives on the big data revolution. Discussing important contributions from machine learning and data science, the course explores their legal, economic, ethical, and political implications in the past, present, and future.

In the course Public Institutions and Policy-Making Processes students acquire the contextual knowledge for analyzing public policies. They learn why and how public policies and laws are developed, designed, and implemented at national and international levels, and what challenges arise in this regard.

The Workshop and Lectures Series in Law and Economics is a joint seminar of ETH Zurich and the Universities of Basel, Lucerne, St. Gallen and Zurich. Legal, economics, and psychology scholars will give a lecture and/or present their current research. All speakers are internationally well-known experts from Europe, the U.S. and beyond.

The Workshop & Lecture Series on the Law & Economics of Innovation is a joint project by ETH Zurich and the Universities of St. Gallen and Zurich. It provides an overview of interdisciplinary research on intellectual property, innovation, antitrust and technology policy. Scholars from law, economics, management and related fields give a lecture and/or present their current research. All speakers are internationally well-known experts from Europe, the U.S. and beyond.

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