Edwin Jacobs

Edwin Jacobs is a partner at Timelex, a Brussels-based law firm specialised in technology, data and intellectual property law. He has practised law for over thirty years, concentrating on commercial and business contracts, IP and technology licensing, software and cloud arrangements, trade secrets and know-how, digital finance and FinTech including payment services, data protection under the GDPR, and cybersecurity regulation including NIS2, DORA and the Cyber Resilience Act. A significant part of his current work concerns artificial intelligence, including the AI Act, liability for AI systems, and ownership and licensing questions arising from AI-assisted research and development. Edwin Jacobs has been accredited as a mediator by the Belgian Federal Mediation Commission since 2008 and is on the list of mediators of CEPANI, the Belgian Centre for Arbitration and Mediation. His mediation appointments have arrived through three channels: appointment by mediation centres as independent mediator in IT disputes, appointment by Belgian courts in civil and commercial matters, and direct joint selection by counsel for both parties. They include a mediation concerning the licensing of a patent, and further mediations on commercial and business contracts, licensing, outsourcing, software, cloud and IP matters. They have been conducted in Dutch, French and English, in some cases in more than one language within the same proceeding. He has completed WIPO mediation training in Brussels, and has taught the practical negotiation and mediation course at the Law Faculty of the University of Antwerp since 2008. As counsel he has more than twenty years of experience negotiating and resolving complex multi-party, multi-jurisdictional technology disputes. Before joining Timelex he was head of legal of Isabel NV, a provider of e-banking, e-invoicing and e-government services, and headed the technology, media and telecommunications practice of a Brussels law firm. He was an associate researcher and lecturer at ICRI, now CITIP, at KU Leuven, from 2003 to 2016. He is admitted to the Brussels Bar and sits as one of its representatives in the General Meeting of the Order of Flemish Bars (OVB). Chambers and Partners ranks him for FinTech Legal in Belgium and lists him as a recognised practitioner in TMT/IT in Chambers Europe. Legal 500 EMEA recommends him individually in information technology, privacy and data protection, intellectual property, media and entertainment, and FinTech. He is co-author of the chapter on negotiation in Conflictafhandeling buiten de rechtbank (Larcier-Intersentia, 2019), with an updated edition due in early 2027, and has written on mediation in IT disputes for practitioner publications. He has also published on EU artificial intelligence law, including a chapter on advising on AI use in De bedrijfsjurist als businesspartner (Larcier-Intersentia, 2025) and two chapters in AI voor advocaten (Larcier-Intersentia, 2026). He works in Dutch, French, English and German.