Ghent

Local Coordinator

BenDepoorter

Prof. Ben Depoorter is the Max Radin Distinguished Professor University of California, Hastings College of the Law, EMLE coordinator at CASLE Ghent University, and Affiliate Scholar at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet at Society. He is a frequent visiting professor at Berkeley Law, teaching in the LL.M.’s Professional Track. Professor Ben Depoorter completed his studies at Yale Law School (2003, 2009) on a full scholarship from the BAEF. As an Oscar Cox and Olin Fellow at Yale, Depoorter served as an editor of the Yale J. Reg. He was a Santander Research Fellow at U.C. Berkeley and a recipient of a Fulbright scholarship.

Copyright law is one of his major areas of expertise, where Depoorter has investigated a variety of questions relating to enforcement of intellectual property law in the digital era, including whether and how fees-shifting can be used to align incentives between authors in way that promote creativity, how punitive approaches to copyright law adversely impact copyright social norms, and how automated enforcement measures create false positives.

Recent publications include “When the Remedy is the Wrong: Statutory Damages in the Digital Age”, UCLA Law Review (2019); “The Upside of Losing”, “Fair Trespass”, Columbia Law Review (2014, 2011); “Using Fee Shifting to Promote Fair Use and Fair Licensing”, California Law Review (2015); “Copyright Backlash”, Southern California Law Review (2011); “Law in the Shadow Bargaining: The Feedback Effect of Civil Settlements”, Cornell Law Review (2010); “Technology & Uncertainty: The Shaping Effect on Copyright Law”, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review (2010), and “Liquidated Damages and Moral Hazard: An Experiment”, JITE (2016). His interdisciplinary work on anticommons property is widely cited in American law reviews and international peer-reviewed journals and was featured in a 2010 issue of the New Yorker.

Personal site

SSRN Research Page

Teaching Staff

bouckaert

Professor Boudewijn Bouckaert is an emeritus professor at the University of Ghent. He was the director of the Department of General Theory and History of Law and the dean of the Law School. In 1989 he started the European Master in Law and Economics (EMLE) program and was its first director. He was a guest professor at several universities such as the Université de Bujumbura, Aix-en-Provence, Montpellier, Turin, and the Institute of Humane Studies at Belmont California. In 2005 he held the Erasmus chair at Harvard Law School, Cambridge Massachusetts. His research and publications concern foremost the economics of property rights. He is presently teaching the courses Property Law and Economics and Law and Development in the EMLE program.

chirstophvanderelst

Prof. Christoph Van der Elst is Professor of commercial contracts and corporate governance at Ghent University since 2001. He combines this position with a professorhip at the University of Tilburg (The Netherlands).  He is also research associate of the European Corporate Governance Institute. He has a master in Economics, a master in Law and a Ph.D. in Economics.

Mitja Kovac

Prof. dr. Mitja Kovac was born in 1976, graduated law with “cum laude” at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Law (Slovenia). He gained his LL.M. and PhD in the field of comparative contract law and economics at Utrecht University, Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance (The Netherlands). In 2006 he became also a member of the Economic Impact Group within the CoPECL Network of Excellence (European DCFR project). He was a visiting professor at the ISM University of Management and Economics in Vilnius (Lithuania), visiting lecturer at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands) and a research fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law in London (UK) and at the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis (USA). Currently he is a full-time professor of civil and commercial law at the University of Ljubljana, School of Economics and Business (Slovenia), a visiting lecturer at the University of Ghent (Belgium), at the University of Turin (Italy) and at University of Vienna (Austria). He publishes in the fields of comparative law and economics, new institutional economics, consumer protection, contract theory, intellectual property rights and competition law and economics.

Andrea Giannaccari

Prof. Andrea Giannaccari (LLM, PHD) is Associate Professor of Comparative Law and collaborates with the Research Department of the Italian Constitutional Court. Andrea is constantly involved in teaching activities (at undergraduate, graduate, master courses and doctorate levels) in several universities including, among the others, LUISS Guido Carli – Rome, Ghent University, Università di Siena and Erasmus University Rotterdam. He has also collaborated with many other institutions (as IMT Institute for Advanced Studies, the Polytechnic University of Turin and the Giovanni Agnelli foundation). Andrea is also co-editor of the Italian law and economics review Mercato Concorrenza Regole.

His main fields of interest are competition law and economics, comparative law, intellectual property and privacy. On these topics Andrea has published roughly one hundred research items (books, book’ chapters, articles and case commentaries). He has recently authored: Comparative Competition Law and Economics (with R. Van den Bergh and P. Camesasca), Edward Elgar, 2017; and Standard Setting and the Law, LUISS University Press, 2018.

Bruno Merlevede

Bruno Merlevede is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics at Ghent University in Belgium. His field of interest is Applied Economics, especially topics concerning Firm Performance, Foreign Direct Investment, and Regional Economics. Drafts of his current research papers are here. Publications here. Personal website is here.

PASFOTO_R_Korsten

Dr. Ruben Korsten is a teaching assistant and researcher at the Center of Advanced Studies in Law and Economics (CASLE) at Ghent University Law School, Belgium. He graduated with honors in law and obtained his Master’s degree in Private Law (LL.M) from the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands). Additionally, Ruben holds Master’s degrees in Law and Economics (Msc./LL.M.) from the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai (India), Hamburg University (Germany) and the University of Bologna (Italy). In 2023, he completed his PhD in Law and Economics at Ghent University. He was a visiting scholar at the Pontifical Xavierian University, Bogota (Colombia) and Loyola University, Baltimore (MD, US).

In addition to his academic roles at Ghent University, Ruben is a full-time legal counsel at the Colruyt Group, a prominent retail group based in Belgium, where he primarily focuses on matters related to competition. He also provides policy advice as a law and economics consultant, particularly to the European Commission.