Beat Weibel
Head of ETH transfer – IP and Licenses
Beat Weibel is Lecturer at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences and Head of ETH transfer – IP and Licenses at ETH Zurich.
He studied Electrical Engineering at ETH Zurich and began his professional career as a trainee patent attorney at ABB from 1991 to 1995. In 1995 he qualified as a European Patent Attorney and in 2008 obtained an LL.M. in European Intellectual Property Law.
He has held several senior intellectual property roles in industry, including Head of Corporate IP at Georg Fischer AG from 1998 to 2000, Head of the IP Department of ABB Switzerland from 2000 to 2007, and Chief IP Counsel of ABB Ltd. from 2007 to 2012. From 2013 until May 2025, he was Head of the global Intellectual Property Department at Siemens AG.
Alongside his industry roles, he has been a long-standing lecturer in patent law at ETH Zurich. He also lectures at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences and gives guest lectures at the Technical University of Munich. He teaches in preparatory courses for the Swiss patent attorney qualifying examination and regularly publishes and speaks on current topics in intellectual property law.
He has served as President of the German Association of Patent Attorneys (VPP) and the European Federation of Intellectual Property Agents in Industry (FEMIPI). He is currently a board member of GRUR and INGRES, and a member of the curatorship of the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition.