About

Don McGowan, chief legal officer and business affairs at Pokémon, started at Pokémon as general counsel in August 2008, receiving the promotion to chief legal officer and business affairs in September 2016. Prior to this he was a senior attorney at Microsoft, where he was the lead attorney for Microsoft Game Studios (2005-08). Before that he worked in the regulatory affairs and public policy division at Microsoft where he handled security and encryption issues (2004-05). He started his career in Montreal as a litigator at Osler, Hoskin, and Harcourt (2002-04) and Stikeman Elliott (1998-2002). McGowan identifies that his top three highlights are the launch of the popular mobile game Pokémon GO and the corollary investment into Niantic Inc. (the games developer), the negotiation of a live-action feature film for Pokémon with Legendary Pictures, and the spinoff of Bungie Studios from Microsoft Game Studios. Each of these involved high-risk, high-reward opportunities. He explains: ‘These [highlights] have taught me to be strong when necessary without being needlessly rigid, and they have shaped me into someone who knows how to fit into a team involving both legal and non-legal team members functioning at high levels. They have also taught me to recognise my own limits and to find ways to get past them’. For example, when launching Pokémon GO in Eastern Europe, he became aware that he would have to find a way to ensure that children weren’t wandering into landmine fields. Through connections in the NGO community he reached out to the State Department and obtained information about the GPS coordinates for these locations, which he was able to pass to Niantic to have them remove these locations from the game. Children’s privacy and toy safety issues affect the business every day. For the launch of Pokémon GO, McGowan was required to develop and implement a method to ensure parental consent for a geolocation technology being used by children. He identifies that, ‘this was an issue that had never been confronted before, and getting it wrong would have been catastrophic. Working with experts in the field we developed the relevant technological solution and the product launched without issue’. For toy safety he helped the company implement a comprehensive product safety regime that has led to avoiding the significant negative press that would come from any recall. He advises new in-house lawyers to ‘build yourself a support network of general counsel. There is no one out there in your working environment who understands what you’re going through. The other lawyers at your company all work for you. Your peers at your company aren’t lawyers. And your outside counsel can leave your problems at the office when they go home. You need other people who know what it’s like when the risk and the responsibility are all on you’.