Crowell & Moring LLP

Intellectual property, Litigation and Trial, Media and Entertainment law, Food

Partner

When their sensitive information, innovations, or creative efforts are at risk, clients find in Jan-Diederik Lindemans an experienced strategic adviser who can help mitigate risks and ultimately solve the challenges they are facing. While domestic and cross-border litigation is undoubtedly his forte, Jan-Diederik also regularly handles transactional matters, typically related to the science, technology, and media and entertainment industries. With a background in intellectual property and a knack for “impossible” contentious patent and trademark matters, Jan-Diederik today co-leads the largest, most-diverse, and truly full-service tech and IP team in the country.

For more than two decades, Jan-Diederik has helped his clients achieve business-oriented solutions to often strategically crucial issues within and outside the court room. Through secondments and external general counsel positions at clients, Jan-Diederik has honed a talent for striking the right balance between a legally correct and business-sound solution and the often very complex or delicate issues that clients face. His international professional network has been described by clients as “pure gold” and has enabled Jan-Diederik to deliver his clients tailor-made solutions around the globe.

Jan-Diederik is a partner in Crowell’s Brussels office. As a litigator, he most often defends his clients’ interests in ex parte, preliminary, and permanent injunction proceedings and in accelerated and standard proceedings on the merits. He has dealt with issues relating to IP, trade secrets, unfair competition, and other contentious matters. Jan-Diederik is also often consulted by clients in pretrial  matters, such as pretrial discovery (saisie-contrefaçon), trade secrets compliance, and anticounterfeiting strategy. He further advises on noncontentious matters relating to licensing or transferring IP, (re)structuring IP portfolios, joint ventures, and other types of creative/technological collaborations.

Jan-Diederik’s focus is on legal advice that has an immediate impact on his clients’ businesses (e.g., product recall avoidance or opposition proceedings in relation to access to confidential information).

For his clients in the chemical, life sciences, and biotechnology sectors, Jan-Diederik has, among other actions, filed protective letters and represented clients in complex patent validity proceedings (often involving cross-border issues). His clients in entertainment and the media call on him to advise on negotiations as well as rely on him to defend their various IP rights (relating to on- and off-screen talent, content production and licensing, collecting societies, and more). For clients in the fashion industry, Jan-Diederik has assisted with their IP portfolios and represented them in commercial disputes, distribution, counterfeiting matters, search and seizure, and EU-wide or national border measures.

Dutch, French, German, Spanish.

Member of the Dutch-speaking Brussels Bar. Member of the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual property; Belgian Association for Copyright; ICC Commission on Intellectual Property; ICC Task Force on Trade Secrets; Founding Member of the Commission on Intellectual Property of the Brussels Bar Association

Catholic University of Leuven (2001); State University of Ghent (2013 post academic course in biotechnology).