The Center for Intellectual Property, Media and Innovation Law is dedicated to application-oriented research on legal challenges a networked society and economy pose for creative and cultural creations and technical innovations.  

Research at the Center focuses on legal research in the fields of IP, media- and innovation law law as well as in complementary fields. The research topics dealt with by the Center not only encounter a strong interest in academia, but also enjoy growing attention in the economy and civil society. A significant contribution to trend has been made by the rapid technological progress, the associated digitization of almost all areas of life and global networking in society and economy.

From a methodological point of view, research activities at the Center are initially oriented towards the traditional approach of legal doctrine. However, where this approach reaches its limits, inter- or transdisciplinary methods are used complementarily. Because of the dynamic technological, economic, and social conditions for creative and cultural creation and technical innovations, an expansion of the spectrum of methods is often indicated in order to make an evidence-based contribution to the scientific and legal policy discourse. This spectrum of methods also includes participatory research approaches within the concept of Citizen Science. Finally, the (professional) experience of students supervised by the Center is included into the research and makes a valuable contribution to the further development in the sense of teaching-led research.

Research areas:

  • Intellectual property law, with a focus on international, European and Austrian copyright law, trademark law and design protection
  • Media law
  • Competition law
  • Innovation and technology law, with a focus on data, IT and software law
  • Data protection / privacy law

Current research focus:

  • Digital Single Market
  • Digitization in research and teaching
  • Platform-based-economy
  • Prosuming and Sharing Culture (User Generated Content)
  • Remuneration for creation in the digital age
  • Co-Creation, Open and User Innovation
  • (Digital) Cultural Heritage
  • Smart economy

The academic team of the Center is in charge of organizing scientific conferences for the Scientific & Practice Community. To be mentioned in particular: