Prof. Stefan Bechtold (CLE) elected as Associate Vice President for IP Policy

Every year, scientists at ETH Zurich record around 200 inventions, file 80 to 100 patents and issue roughly 40 new licences. Because of technological progress and the internationalisation of the research landscape, the intellectual property (IP) underlying all of these advancements has become a highly dynamic area fraught with complexity. This raises new questions for ETH Zurich in terms of Swiss and international law and also offers opportunities for strategic decision-​making.

The Executive Board plans to dedicate more resources to the strategic development of intellectual property issues. One point of emphasis will be the protection of intellectual property created at ETH Zurich so that researchers can use their knowledge for spin-​off companies. The university would also like to focus on training scientists to understand the fundamentals of IP and to strategically deploy it in their research.

With these aims in mind, the Executive Board has created the post of Associate Vice President for IP Policy and named Stefan Bechtold, Professor of Intellectual Property at the Center for Law & Economics (D-​GESS), as the first officeholder. His term began on 1 September 2023. 

Stefan Bechtold has been part of ETH Zurich since 2008. From 2018 to 2021 he served as Head of Department for D-​GESS. Also, he contributed to the organisational development project rETHink as part of Workstream 2, which was dedicated at improving and developing professorships at ETH Zurich. His research interests include IP, technology and antitrust law, as well as economic analyses of law.

As Associate Vice President of IP Policy, Stefan Bechtold will tackle topics such as guidelines for open source software at ETH, training and awareness-​raising measures for researchers regarding IP issues, and strategic matters in the Office of Corporate Relations and Knowledge Transfer.