Bart Lieben

Hi – my name is Bart, I co-founded IP Metro and I’m an attorney with the Antwerp and Brussels Bars. As an experienced practitioner for more than 25 years, I have co-created Magnify.Plus because all the existing ‘solutions’ tried to change my way of working instead of adapting to it. Over the past two and a half decades, I have assisted many innovative entrepreneurs and enterprises in various matters relating to intellectual property, technology, law, so launching Magnify.Plus was a natural next step.

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While working for PwC and Deloitte, I have had the opportunity to develop a 360° perspective on the functioning of companies, how they manage their risks and – more importantly – how they identify and explore business opportunities through innovation and collaborating with third parties. This is why Magnify is “use-case agnostic”: it is not for us to predict what right holders will need to look for or why. Our job is to help them find it and, if needed, to assist them in related enforcement actions.  

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The domain component of Magnify.plus stems from my years of expertise in the domain name industry. Among other projects, I directed:
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• The “sunrise” project for EURid in the context of the launch of the .EU top-level domain. This project is still considered the largest and most complex IP audit that has ever been performed in the world.;  
• based on this experience, I developed the blueprint for what is now known as the “Trademark Clearinghouse” of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN);

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From an academic perspective:

I have been a researcher at the Law Faculty of the University of Antwerp, and a Professor at the Karel De Grote-Hogeschool and the University of Alicante (Magister Lvcentinvs), lecturing on intellectual property, technology transfer, the legal aspects of ICT, domain name dispute avoidance and dispute resolution.  

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I am proficient in Dutch (native), French and English, with notions of German.