Marie-Christine Janssens studied law and history of arts at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven). She received her law degree (Lic. Jur.) in 1981 and joined that year the Brussels Bar. During the period 1981 - 1993 she practiced law in an international Brussels Law firm specializing in intellectual property matters (copyright, trademark and patent cases). From 1985-1986 she continued this specialization in the U.S.A. as a staff member in a law firm based in Washington D.C.
She joined the former Centre for Intellectual Property Rights (CIR) in February 1989 as an assistant to Professor Frank Gotzen. In January 1996 she obtained a Ph.D. from the Faculty of Law at the KU Leuven with a dissertation on the legal status of employee and university inventions in the countries of the European Union.
She is currently full professor at the Universitiy of Leuven (KU Leuven) where she teaches various courses at the law faculty both at graduate and postgraduate level, including "Copyright Law", "Trademark Law" (in Dutch and English) and "Intellectual Property Right". She also teaches courses on Intellectual Property at the Faculty of Engineering and an interfaculty course for non law students on "Intellectual Property Management". Between 2009-2012 she was a visiting professor at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing (CUPL) for the course 'intellectual property law' in a special LLM program. At the KU Leuven she is member of the Commission on Scientific Integrity and academic responsible for the library of the Faculty of Law.
She is Head of Unit of the KU Leuven Centre for IT & IP Law (CiTiP), with a team of over 40 researchers specialized in legal and ethical aspects of Information Technology and Intellectual Property. CiTiP has a solid track record as partner of various interdisciplinary research projects, including 25 FP 7 projects, more than 15 H2020 projects and many other nationally funded projects.
Topics that she personally specializes on include European Trademark Law, Harmonisation of copyright norms in the EU, Exceptions to copyright, Moral rights, Text and Data mining, Orphan works, Software protection, Open access & Open Data, PSI, Employee inventions & Inventions at universities, IP enforcement and challenges of AI & blockchain for IPRs.
Since 2006 Marie-Christine Janssens is President of the Belgian Council for Intellectual Property Rights, section Copyright and Neighbouring Rights (Ministry of Economic Affairs).
Marie-Christine Janssens is a member of
- the editorial board of the Belgian IPR Journal Intellectuele Rechten – Droits Intellectuels (IRDI), since its foundation in 1995 (published by Kluwer)
- the editorial board of the Journal Revue international du droit des affaires/Internationaal tijdschrift voor ondernemingsrecht (DA OR) (published by Larcier Publ.)
- the scientific comité of the Journal Revue de Droit Commercial Belge/Tijdschrift voor Belgisch Handelsrecht (RDC/TBH) (published by Larcier Publ.)
- the editiorial board of the collection Collectie Bedrijfsrecht since its foundation in 2004 (published by Vanden Broele, Bruges)
She is also
- Vice-President of the Belgian Section of ALAI (Belgische Vereniging voor de Bescherming van het Auteursrecht BVA)
- member of the Executive Committee of the International Organisation for the Protection of intellectual Property (ALAI)
- Co-ordinator of the training preparing for the certificate of "Benelux Trademarks and Designs Agent", organised by the BBMM.
- member of the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AIPPI)
- member of the International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property (ATRIP)
- member of the Organisation of Benelux Trade Mark and Design agents (Benelux Merken- en Modellengemachtigden-BMM)
- member of the European Copyright Society (ECS). See papers published by the ECS here.