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.
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.
A small founding circle of residences in Zatoglav. Owners and co-investors only, no public resale. Building on the philosophy of Carpe Diem²: owners with a strong ethical bond to trust, integrity and honesty, exceptional in their field, not anonymous purchasers. A community built on shared experience, not on commerce.
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 building, defending, and licensing patents, including works upheld by Germany's Federal Court of Justice (BGH), the founder is now focused on a single question: how to bring founder-grade patent thinking to a country that produced Nikola Tesla and continues to produce inventors who deserve better than Western law-firm budgets. Today, IPC serves a small number of international clients personally. From 2027, a coaching system will open the same thinking to Croatian startups, at Croatian startup economics.
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.
Croatian founders should not need a German or Swiss law-firm budget to know whether their idea is patentable, what to claim, and how to defend it across borders. IPC is building an AI-assisted coaching system that brings founder-grade patent thinking to early-stage Croatian teams at Croatian price points. In development; launch planned for 2027. Designed for individual inventors, university spin-offs, and accelerator programs.
Hourly billing turns advisors into hour-counters. Equity turns them into co-builders. IPC chooses the second model where it can, and aligns its incentive with the long-term success of the venture, not the time sheet.
Continuing the philosophy already in operation at Carpe Diem², the founder's villa just next door. But at a different scale: six to eight private homes, shaped by a quiet Mediterranean sensibility. Croatian stone, Tuscan restraint, contemporary engineering. Designed for owners and a small community, not for 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.
A separate vision from the Residences. Where Zatoglav Residences is about ownership, Aevum is for visitors. A small, deliberate destination, somewhere between sanctuary, retreat, and idea-laboratory, for a circle of guests who already know how to find it.
Aevum is the kind of project that gets copied if it is talked about too early. The founder treats it like a patent application that hasn't been filed yet: thorough thinking, then public disclosure, never the other way around. Visitors with the right networks and time horizons are 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.
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.
He attended primary school in Smiljan, then secondary school in Karlovac, before continuing his studies in Graz, Prague, and eventually New York. By the time he reshaped the modern world (alternating current, wireless transmission, the rotating magnetic field), he was working far from where he began. But he began here.
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.
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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