Katya has written on a variety of legal topics, including expression in public space, the right to the city, advertising, trademarks, patents, freedom of expression, media regulation, defamation, and the use of symbols. Her writings critically analyze consumer culture, narratives of public space, capitalist ideology and brand fetishism. They always combine legal analysis with insights from other disciplines, such as economics, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and semiotics. She is also interested in comparative law, particularly in comparing German and US-American legal regulations and tracing their cultural and philosophic roots.
In recent years, Katya’s research focuses on urban public space. Together with photographer Tim Schnetgöke, she has described the narratives embedded in the urban visual environment and criticized their legal regulation—for example, the unequal treatment of graffiti and the privileged status of commercial advertising in public space. Katya and Tim develop the concept of the city as a stage—a city that grants its residents visibility and the ability to express themselves in its public spaces. They initiated a series of urban experiments in Berlin that allow residents to display texts or images of their choice on billboards in public space. A selection of works from these experiments is presented in the permanent exhibition “Message in a Box from a Far Land” at the Faculty of Law.
Together with the Diversity Unit at the Hebrew University, Katya initiated the project series “Ani Kan” (I’m Here) which allows students and staff to present visual expressions of their choice on the campus.
Education
1996-2000 – The Hebrew University, Faculty of Law, LL.B
2000-2002 – The Hebrew University, Faculty of Law, LL.M graduated with honors
2003-2006 – Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Faculty of Law, Ph.D. (Supervisor: Reto M. Hilty) graduated summa cum laude
won Law Faculty Prize at Ludwig Maximilian University
won Otto Hahn Medal, an academic award granted by the Max Planck Society
Representative Publications
If Billboards Could Talk: Re-Imagining Urban Spaces as Sites of Individual Expression (with Tim Schnetgöke), 24 Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal 165 (2025)
(Un)Official Cityscapes: The Battle over Urban Narratives (with Tim Schnetgöke), 57 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 178 (2022)
Reading the Illegible: Can Law Understand Graffiti? (with Tim Schnetgöke), 53 Connecticut Law Review 465 (2021)
The Importance of Being First: Economic and non-economic dimensions of inventorship in US-American and German law, (with Lisa Herzog), 70 American Journal of Comparative Law 447 (2023)
Work, Identity, and the Regulation of Markets: A Study of Trademark Law in the U.S. and Germany (with Lisa Herzog), 44 Law & Social Inquiry 1083 (2019)
Non-Traditional Trademarks as (Non-Traditional) Means of Cultural Control?, in Non-Traditional Marks and the (Risks of the) Expansion of Trademark Rights in Singapore (Irene Calboli & Martin Senflleben, eds.) Oxford University Press (2018)
Of Patents and Cobras: Changing the Incentive Structure of Patent Law, 35 Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal 1 (2017)
Buying Goods and Doing Good: Trademarks and Social Competition, 67 Alabama Law Review 100-139 (2016)
Capitalism against Freedom, 38 NYU Review of Law & Social Change 201 (2015)
Der Zauber der Marke, 2015 GRUR Int. 426 (2015)
Magical Thinking in Trademark Law, 37 Law & Social Inquiry 595 (2012)
Brand Fetishism, 43 Connecticut Law Review 83 (2010)
Der Markenschutz und seine kulturelle Bedeutung: Ein Vergleich des deutschen mit dem US-amerikanischen, 2009 GRUR Int. 1 (2009)
The Dilution of Culture and the Law of Trademarks, 49 IDEA 1 (2008)