A small Croatian company, founded in 2017 in Split. From a registered seat there and an operating office in Zatoglav, a small place in a sea bay on the Adriatic coast facing the island of Rogoznica, we work on three integrated lines: intellectual property, residential development, and a future destination that we will not name yet.
Dr. Thomas Leiber founded IPC in Split in 2017, the same year he made Croatia his home. His work in automotive patents spans four decades: brake-by-wire, vehicle motion control, a portfolio of roughly five hundred filings, several upheld by Germany's Federal Court of Justice. His training began with a Diplom-Ingenieur in aerospace engineering from TU Berlin, followed by a doctorate in electrical engineering from Graz and a post-doctoral fellowship in aerospace engineering at MIT. After an early career at McKinsey, he has founded or co-founded companies in Croatia, Switzerland, and Germany. The bay behind him is Zatoglav, where he lives and works. From here, the next chapter is for Croatian inventors.
Each practice operates at its own tempo: already active, building toward launch, or quiet by design. All share the same standards: patience over haste, restraint over noise, evidence over claim.
Patent advisory for international clients today, founder-led. A coaching tool for Croatian startups in development, built on the conviction that founders should not need a German or Swiss law-firm budget to defend their ideas.
Six to eight private homes alongside Carpe Diem², the villa Thomas built next door and the operating reference for what comes next. Owners chosen for character, mutual respect, and a shared sense of place. Neighbours by choice, not buyers in a market.
A Mediterranean destination built around longevity and quality of life in nature, a combination that does not yet exist in this form. Adriatic light, sea, and quiet, paired with what the next decade makes possible.
The next chapter is for Croatia. After four decades of patent work in automotive engineering, including BGH-confirmed foundational claims, IPC now focuses on one practical question: how to bring founder-grade patent strategy to Croatian inventors who cannot afford Munich, Zurich, or London hourly rates of €300–500. Today IPC serves international clients personally. From 2027 a coaching tool will extend the same thinking to Croatian startups, at Croatian price points.
Most IP advisors evaluate patents from the outside. IPC evaluates them from the inside, applying the same forensic thinking that goes into drafting a defensible claim and building a fence around the innovation.
The practice is based in Dalmatia, also covering Zagreb. International engagements are limited by deliberate choice. For Croatia, a different model is being prepared, one that meets the local startup economics where they actually are.
For founders who cannot afford hourly advisory, IPC explores IP-for-equity arrangements: structured guidance in exchange for a minority stake in the resulting venture. Common in mature US ecosystems, rare in Croatia. IPC thinks it shouldn't be, and is willing to carry the risk alongside the founder, from first idea to enforcement.
International engagements run through specialized companies in Switzerland where the founder is the owner or majority shareholder. Structural detail available on direct enquiry.
Thomas spent his career drafting patents that survived BGH challenges and licensing them across automotive supply chains. That experience is what most Croatian founders cannot buy: a Munich or Zurich patent attorney bills €300–500 per hour, which puts founder-grade strategy out of reach exactly when it matters most.
IPC is building an AI-assisted coaching tool that brings that experience to early-stage Croatian teams at Croatian price points. It is designed to help founders answer the questions that decide whether a patent is worth filing at all:
In development; launch planned for 2027. For individual inventors, university spin-offs, and accelerator programs.
Hourly billing turns advisors into hour-counters. Equity turns them into co-builders. For Croatian startups, IPC works exclusively in IP-for-Equity: structured guidance in exchange for a minority stake. For international clients, project-based engagement or retainer. No hourly billing in either case.
At Carpe Diem², the villa Thomas built next door, a way of living together has been working for years: shared meals, late conversations, friends and family and quiet stretches of nothing. Zatoglav Residences extends that same rhythm to six to eight private homes nearby. The architecture is Mediterranean (Croatian stone, Tuscan restraint, contemporary engineering), but the substance is the people: owners chosen for character, mutual respect, a shared sense of place. Neighbours by choice, not buyers in a market.
Like a patent application, the Residences are kept quiet and confidential until they are ready to be shown. Interested parties are welcome to reach out; specific information is shared only after mutual fit becomes clear.
Aevum is a destination Thomas is shaping for people whose company he enjoys. The point is the time spent there: long conversations, debate, shared meals, the kind of unhurried company that is rare elsewhere. Longevity is part of the project as both subject and practice. Where Zatoglav Residences is about owning a home, Aevum is about coming as a guest.
Like any great idea, this is not talked about yet. Not because there is something shady, but because it is a really cool idea and we don't want it to be copied before it is ready. Thomas treats it the way he treats a patent application that hasn't been filed yet: thorough thinking first, public disclosure later. Anyone whose interests fit is welcome to introduce themselves.
Aevum is currently in concept development. Planning consent is expected in 2027; unveiling will follow in 2027–2028, completion targeted for 2030 onward.
For the founder, whose work is described above, the pleter and the key are not decorative. They are a position statement: about where this company is rooted, what tradition it intends to extend, and why patent knowledge belongs in the hands of the inventors who make it.
The pattern at the center of our mark is called pleter, Croatian for interlace. It is one of the oldest visual languages of the Croatian lands.
Carved into church doorways and altar screens from the 9th century onward, the pleter became the signature ornament of medieval Croatian craftsmanship: knotwork without beginning or end, geometry without ostentation, a discipline of restraint expressed in stone.
The pleter appears on the crest of the Croatian national football team. It marks coins, manuscripts, the cuff of traditional embroidery, the medieval gravestones of the Adriatic coast. It is what Croatian identity looks like when expressed in pattern rather than in slogan.
The skeleton key beneath the pleter is a deliberate addition.
A pleter without a key is an ornament. A pleter with a key is a statement about what knowledge does: it unlocks.
Patent knowledge in particular is the kind of knowledge that, once shared, lets a small inventor stand against a large incumbent. That is the work we intend to do for the Croatian startups we will serve.
Smiljan is a small village in the Lika hills, a few hours inland from where IPC works today. It is also where Nikola Tesla was born in 1856.
Tesla's path also runs through Thomas's own work. He took his doctorate in electrical engineering at the same Graz where Tesla studied from 1875, and like Tesla before him his work later took him to the United States, to a post-doctoral fellowship at MIT. A shared fascination with the invisible force runs through his patents on a new generation of high-force-density electric machines, several of which are now in commercial use.
A practice working in invention, in these same lands, can take the long view: that consequential ideas have come from this part of Europe before, and that the conditions for the next one are not as far away as they might seem.
There is a pattern, recent but real, of foreign entrepreneurs who choose Croatia not because it is convenient but because it suits something deeper in how they want to work and live: a country still on a human scale, with profound natural beauty and a quality of human contact increasingly rare in the noisier parts of Europe.
The founder has visited more than sixty-five countries and lived across Europe and the United States. Croatia is where the work feels clearest, where creative attention recovers. Since 2017, Croatia has been his home, where he has built his life.
The connection runs the other way too. Through his company LSP and a Tier 1 supplier, Thomas helped develop the brake system in small-series production in Mate Rimac's Nevera, the hypercar that represents Croatia's current chapter of invention.
What IPC does in Croatia is not extractive. It is structured and continuous, the way the pleter is, and patient in the way the pleter is made.
Before any conversation begins, a public reference for the substance behind IPC's claims is already available. Carpe Diem², the founder's primary private residence in Zatoglav, his home in Croatia since 2017, demonstrates the hospitality and operating standard through publicly visible reviews.
The founder's primary private residence in Zatoglav, his home in Croatia since 2017. From time to time, and entirely at the owner's discretion, the home is opened to a small number of selected guests for EO/YPO retreats, family gatherings, and AI workshops. Public reviews on Google show what guests experience there, which is the foundation the future projects build on, at greater scale.
A small selection of testimonials from drthomasleiber.com/about: the people who have worked with Thomas in deep, multi-year contexts. The full set of voices, including those of board members at Continental, Lufthansa, Sun Mobility and former heads of McKinsey Europe, is published openly there.
Thomas is an entrepreneur with focus, innovation power and heart.
Thomas is one of those rare minds who blends invention with impact.
His trustworthiness, professionalism, and ability to remain grounded are qualities I deeply respect.
A far-sighted and honest entrepreneur.
His boldness in driving innovation and advocating for the recognition of Intellectual Property.
Intuitive, passionate, multicultural. One of the most global persons I have known.
You have my highest respect, and now you'll have my commitment forever.
A rare ability to mentor, collaborate, and uplift everyone around him.
An exhilarating blend of engineering precision and creative brilliance.
IPC is opening a single role. The Zatoglav Residences development needs a Project Manager, and the right one is rare.
We are looking for a Project Manager to lead the Zatoglav Residences development: a person comfortable working with municipal authorities in Rogoznica and the wider Šibenik-Knin county, with Croatian construction culture, and with a small founding-circle of owner-investors.
Essential: Croatian language fluency, prior experience managing Adriatic real-estate projects, comfort in slow-decision environments.
Preferred: Established working relationships with local authorities and contractors on the Croatian coast.
"If the role above sounds like the right fit, the next step is a direct conversation."
Express Interest →Inquiries reach IPC's office directly via Cloudflare-routed email. Whether for Intellectual Property, the Residences, or Aevum, the first conversation is unhurried, confidential, and unbinding.
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