At its meeting on 2 December 2024, the Federal Council elected Caroline Perriard to the Institute Council of the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property (IPI). On 1 March 2025, she will succeed Béatrice Renggli, whose 12-year term of office will expire at the end of February 2025. Caroline Perriard, who lives in the canton of Vaud, is an expert on data protection and intellectual property law and has been the president of Juristinnen Schweiz (Women Lawyers Switzerland) since 2021.

 

In Caroline Perriard, the IPI’s Institute Council is gaining a proven expert from the private sector. Since June 2023, Caroline Perriard has been the Director of Data Protection & Privacy at BRP Bizzozero & Partners SA. Prior to that, she was the CEO of BrandIT Legal in Digital, which she co-founded. For more than ten years, she worked in various roles at Nestlé, initially as a Legal Counsel on IP in Trade mark, Copyright and Internet Law and then as Senior Legal Counsel – Digital & E-Commerce. In this role, she was responsible for the legal aspects of Nestlé’s global digital projects.

 

Caroline Perriard studied law at the University of Fribourg and completed a year abroad at the University of Cologne. She obtained her Master’s degree in 2000 and completed a postgraduate LL.M. in international commercial arbitration in Stockholm in 2005. From 2008 to 2014, she lectured on the IP & Internet Master’s programme at the University of Lausanne, and from 2017 to 2022, she taught at the CREA Business School in Geneva.

 

The Institute Council, composed of nine members, is the IPI’s chief operational governing body. It sets the IPI’s fees and approves the IPI’s budget, annual report and financial statements. In addition, the Institute Council determines the composition of the Executive Board, with the exception of the Director General, who is elected by the Federal Council.