Prof. Dr Thomas Hoeren studied theology and law at the Universities of Tübingen, Münster, and London 1980–87. In 1989 he gained his doctorate, and in 1994 his postdoctoral qualification from Münster University. In 1995–97 he was Professor at the Faculty of Law of the Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf. In 1996–2012 he was a part-time judge at the Düsseldorf Appeal Court. Since April 1997 he has been Professor of Information, Media and Business Law at the University of Münster and Head of the Institute for Information, Telecommunication and Media Law (ITM). He is Adjunct Professor at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT). He is a domain-name arbitrator for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the European Commission. In 2012–14 he was Dean of the Faculty of Law at Münster University. His professional appointments and memberships include: Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, Balliol College in 2004; Lecturer in Information and IT Law at the Universities of Zurich and Vienna; Member of the Expert Committee for Copyright and Publishing Law at the German Union for Intellectual Property Protection; since 2006 personal tutor at the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes; in 2005 he received the Alcatel-SEL Foundation research prize for “technical communication”. Since April 2015 he has been a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Education and Research’s major research project ABIDA (Assessing Big Data).