Jacques de Werra is Director of the Digital Law Center at the University of Geneva (www.digitallawcenter.ch). He is professor of contract law and intellectual property law at the Law School of the University of Geneva, Switzerland, since 2006. He was vice-rector of the University of Geneva from 2015 to 2019 (where he was in charge — among other missions —of leading the University’s digital strategy, www.unige.ch/digital). He authored a doctoral thesis in Swiss and comparative copyright law which he completed as a visiting scholar at the Max-Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law in Munich in 1996. He has practiced law in Switzerland, before obtaining an LL.M. degree from Columbia Law School in New York City in 2001 and being admitted to the New York bar in 2002. He was a Faculty Fellow (2012-2013) and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society (2013-2014) and has held visiting professor positions at various universities (including Stanford Law School, Nagoya University, City University of Hong Kong and Université Catholique de Louvain). He is the director of the (newly established) Digital Law Center at the Faculty of Law of the University of Geneva.
Jacques de Werra researches, publishes and speaks on intellectual property law, contract law and Internet, IT and technology and digital law. He has developed a particular expertise in IP commercial law including transfer of technology, licensing and franchising, as well as in alternative dispute resolution mechanisms for IP and technology / digital disputes (specifically arbitration). He has widely published in leading law reviews (including the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, the American Review of International Arbitration (at Columbia Law School) and the Columbia VLA Journal of Law and the Arts) and has authored/edited various books of reference including a Research Handbook on Intellectual Property Licensing (Edward Elgar 2013) and (in co-edition with Prof. Irene Calboli) the Law and Practice of Trademark Transactions (Edward Elgar 2016). He is the coordinator for the University of Geneva of the joint WIPO - University of Geneva Summer School on Intellectual Property and the initiator of the Geneva Digital Law Summer School (www.digitallaw-geneva.ch) and of the Geneva Digital Law Research Colloquium (www.digitallawcolloquium-geneva.ch). Jacques de Werra is the scientific editor of an IP book collection (www.pi-ip.ch), in which the proceedings of annual intellectual property law conferences held at the University of Geneva are published (www.jdpi.ch).
