Peter Snoeker. Source: https://snoekeradvocatuur.nl/english/
University of Leyden
Peter Snoeker was born in 1959 in Breda, a city in the province of North Brabant in the southern Netherlands.
He later studied law in Leiden and spoke several languages in his professional life. He speaks Dutch, English, French, German, and Spanish, and his Amsterdam practice has drawn on this range in advising clients on cross-border matters.
Snoeker studied law at Leiden University, the oldest university in the Netherlands. William of Orange founded it on 8 February 1575 in Leiden, and the institution was formerly known as the Rijksuniversiteit Leiden. His studies there ended in 1988 with a law degree in civil law, the same year he was admitted to practise as a lawyer.
His law studies in Leiden overlapped with practical court work in Haarlem, which gave him early experience of the fast-track proceedings used in intellectual property disputes. Languages remained an asset throughout his career, and he is fluent in English, French, and German in addition to Dutch.
Snoeker's legal experience began while he was still a student. During his law studies in Leiden, he worked for about a year and a half as a court clerk for summary proceedings at the Haarlem District Court, mostly in injunction cases. Dutch district courts hear civil, criminal, and administrative cases at first instance, and summary proceedings, known as kort geding, allow a party to obtain urgent provisional measures before a full trial.
He was sworn in as a lawyer on 9 August 1988 and began practising at Dolk-Verburg-Diamand, an Amsterdam corporate law firm. He became a partner of that firm in 1994. In the Netherlands, admission to practise requires swearing in before a court and registration with the national bar, the Nederlandse Orde van Advocaten.
In 2007 he co-founded Spring Advocaten, an Amsterdam law firm with a corporate law practice, together with two other lawyers. The following year, in 2010, he established his own practice, Snoeker Advocatuur, in Amsterdam.
Snoeker Advocatuur is located on the Keizersgracht canal and focuses on trademark law, copyright, image rights, contract law, design and patent law, and media law. Trademarks protect distinctive business signs, copyright protects creative works, and image rights protect a person's control over the use of their likeness. The firm's profile states that it serves small and mid-sized businesses as well as internationally operating companies. The Netherlands Bar's register of practice areas records his principal areas as intellectual property law and civil procedural law.
Snoeker is a member of the Vereniging Intellectuele Eigendom Proces Advocaten (VIEPA), a specialist association for lawyers who litigate intellectual property cases in the Netherlands. The association was founded in 2015 to promote expert professional practice by procedural lawyers in this field. The Nederlandse Orde van Advocaten, the Dutch bar association, recognizes specialist associations that meet its quality requirements, and VIEPA received this recognition.
