About

Pulin Kumar has almost three decades of in-house legal experience with the large corporations engaged in manufacturing cement, heavy earth movers, life science and electronics, and sporting goods. In his current role as senior legal and compliance director for the global sportswear company adidas, he provides the India team with comprehensive support for all legal and compliance topics. When asked to comment on his greatest career achievement, Kumar shares that he is particularly proud of laying ‘the foundation stone to restrict parallel imports—an important menace to many industries in India—which is still currently awaiting the final outcome from the Apex court’. Kumar’s outstanding track record also includes various cross-jurisdictional issues. Of note is his successful defense of a patent case for dual sim card cell phone technology. The patent holder had the dual sim card phones interdicted at customs, even though the technology was already known. Kumar played an important role in getting the patent for the dual sim technology rectified by the IPAB (Intellectual Property Apellate Board), an important outcome for the entire mobile phone industry. Kumar notes the change within the legal industry during his career, explaining how ‘over a period of time [he has] witnessed a paradigm shift from typical litigation handling to business support and evolved along with this’, noting how ‘as a continuous support to the business, the legal team has come quite close to the board’.