Dr. Urs Gasser is a Berkman faculty fellow and an associate professor of law at the University of St. Gallen, where he serves as the director of the Research Center for Information Law.

Before joining the St. Gallen faculty, Urs spent three years as a research and teaching fellow at the Berkman Center, where he was the lead fellow on the Digital Media Project, a multi-disciplinary research project aimed at exploring the transition from offline/analog to online/digital media. At the Berkman Center, Urs initiated and chaired the Harvard-Yale-Cyberscholar Working Group. In the 2003/04 academic year, Urs was also a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School.

Urs’ research focuses on legal frameworks aimed at regulating information and communication processes, and on effects of structural changes in the information environment on the legal system. Current research projects explore the regulation of digital media (with emphasis on IP law), the anatomy of informational standards, and information quality issues.

Urs Gasser has published and edited, respectively, six books and has written over 40 articles in books, law reviews, and professional journals. Recently, he edited a book on Information Quality Regulation, and wrote a Berkman Report (with Michael Girsberger) on the implementation of the EU Copyright Directive's provision on technological protection measures into member state laws. Urs also published an international supplement to the Berkman whitepaper "Digital Media in a Post-Napster World", and co-authored several other Berkman reports, including the 2004 iTunes case study. He frequently acts as a commentator on comparative law issues for the US and European media.

In the context of the transatlantic collaboration between the Berkman Center and the St. Gallen Research Center, Urs is working – among other things – on a report on teaching and research exceptions in EU member states’ copyright laws, on a paper on digital institutions, and on a piece on participatory culture and the future of information law. The papers will become available via SSRN. As a resident fellow, Urs taught - together with John Palfrey - the spring 2004 and spring 2005 edition of Internet and Society: the Politics and Technologies of Control at Harvard Extension School and participated in Prof. Charles Nesson's "Digital Democracy" course at Harvard Law School. In summer 2004, Urs taught at the Oxford Internet Institute's Doctoral Summer Programme and participated in a session on EU Copyright Law at iLaw Eurasia 2004. In earlier years, Urs worked as a teaching fellow for the 2003 "Berkman Online Lecture and Discussion (BOLD) Series" on Internet and Development, where he had focused on ICT and Entrepreneurship, and served as a teaching fellow for John Palfrey’s "Cyberlaw and the Global Economy Seminar". Currently, Urs teaches information law and cyberlaw courses at the University of St. Gallen.

Urs holds an LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School and had been named one of Harvard Law School's Landon H. Gammon Fellows for the 2002/03 academic year. He obtained his J.D. (lic.iur.) and S.J.D. (Dr.iur.) from University of St. Gallen with summa cum laude and received for his doctoral thesis "Causality of and Responsibility for Information as a Legal Problem" the "Walther Hug-Preis St. Gallen" of his alma mater. This prize is awarded for the best doctoral thesis in the fields of law and public affairs of the current academic year. Furthermore, Urs received the "Rudolf Maeder-Preis" for the best doctorate in law and public affairs of the current academic year. In October 2003, Urs' dissertation was awarded with the "Walther Hug-Preis Schweiz", a prize for the best doctoral theses in law nationwide. After graduation, Urs worked for several years at the Institute for Business Law, European Law and Comparative Law and as a legal expert for an Internet Company and a Consulting Company.

Urs Gasser is a registered Attorney-at-Law in Switzerland, was chairman of the Forum for European Information Law at the 1st European Jurists Day and the 64th Deutscher Juristentag.