Research

The Intellectual Property Group at the Center for Law & Economics at ETH Zurich investigates the design of intellectual property law, law & technology (Internet law, privacy law, automated decision-​making, legal tech), and antitrust law. Although these areas of the law are at the heart of innovation policy debates, their theoretical underpinnings are often fiercely debated and only partially understood.

The Intellectual Property Group addresses this challenge by using advanced social science methods to address pressing questions of current intellectual property, law & technology and antitrust debates. The group conducts large-​​​scale data analyses, experimental lab studies, online experiments, field experiments and qualitative interview studies to identify the impact of legal institutions on human behavior and to draw policy conclusions on the optimal design of legal institutions. The group also applies machine-​​learning and natural-​​language processing tools to intellectual property law and beyond. In a collaboration that includes computer scientists and economists, the group explores how to regulate the digital economy at scale, where regulators face thousands of content providers and millions of consumers.

The Intellectual Property Group co-​organizes the Workshop & Lecture Series on the Law & Economics of Innovation, which regularly brings internationally leading scholars to Zurich.