Associate Vice President for IP Policy

As Associate Vice President of IP Policy, Stefan Bechtold, Professor of Intellectual Property, tackles 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.

Every year at ETH Zurich, we 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 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 protecting the 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.