About

Adidas is the world’s second biggest sports equipment manufacturer, a market position that brings a variety of challenges for Christof Wolpert. He leads a team of attorneys, US patent lawyers, and patent engineers, having been the one in charge of setting up the nowadays very stable and punchy team in the first place: ‘When I arrived in 1999, adidas did not have a patent department at all’. Vital for the successful set up of the department has been ensuring ‘first rate communication with all other business parts dealing with legal matters within the company’. Contrary to many other large corporations, adidas’ patent department is not operating as part of the R&D department but reports directly to the general counsel. ‘This enables us to be directly involved in all major decisions’. Particular highlights have been the successful defence against various attacks by competitors, among them interim injunctions and law suits in Germany and the US. ‘Protecting the company against competitor’s attacks offers the opportunity to prove oneself’. A major challenge has been to ‘newly set up 75% of the entire team due to personnel changes right in the middle of a large law suit’, a situation Wolpert mastered and which resulted in a case won. He enjoys the variety of his work which includes patent registrations, clearance projects, litigation, trade mark related matters and contractual law, all within an international set up.