About

Legal director of Pfizer Ireland Rory Sullivan assumed his current role in 2006, and is a recognised expert in IP law as well as other related laws in the healthcare industry. He first became fascinated with IP law while working as a clerk over the summers during law school. Once he left university he went on to work in IBM’s patent department before qualifying as a barrister and joining a specialist IP chambers in London. After eight years there, he went back in-house to a networks company, 3Com, and then onto the mobile telecoms industry before joining Pfizer. His breadth of experience across multiple industries has enabled him to bring a fresh perspective to his current role and enables him to adapt to a broad range of issues. Highlights of his career include appearances in the English High Court as a barrister, especially applications for interlocutory relief, highlighting that it taught him a lot about adaptability. His involvement in the establishment of a joint venture in China whilst working with 3Com is another highlight. Of this time he says that, ‘this taught me the intricacies of working in a large cross-matrix international negotiation in a highly complex deal, and I really enjoyed working in China’. He was also involved in the acquisition of Wyeth by Pfizer and highlights that ‘this was a highly complex deal operating in different environments and involved a significant increase in the Irish footprint’. Sullivan has recently implemented a matrix working style for the team in order to ‘ensure that the whole team has knowledge of all parts of the business (to allow continuity of support) and to ensure full development of individual team members’. Increased regulation has added significantly to his workload, and so the team has had to improve prioritisation and outsource appropriately. There is a very strong and very welcome practical initiative in the company to concentrate on what adds value and to free up time to focus on strategy. The team now feels empowered to raise its game and also look outside of its roles to see where it can bring greater value to the legal division as a whole. He identifies the ‘key to our success is our extremely strong relationship with senior management and our in-depth understanding of the business, which is an exciting challenge given that we operate across such a diverse range of operations here in Ireland’.