Commercial Legal: Senior Legal Counsel, Intellectual Property

THE POSITION

These are your key tasks:

• Key role within the Commercial Legal Team, with responsibility for the management of all FIFA trademarks, copyrights and designs. Acting as the key point of contact and providing day to day advice to legal colleagues, internal clients and senior management on a range of intellectual property (IP) issues.
• Multijurisdictional trademark and design portfolio management, optimization and strategy, including filing strategy, IP related regulatory advice, overcoming obstacles to registration, renewals and pruning exercises to achieve costs savings.
• Staying current with legal developments, best practices and benchmarks in IP law and assist internal clients in implementing policies and procedures in response thereto.
• Establishing and communicating the IP strategy for trademark, design and copyright clearance, filing, prosecution, litigation and disputes (proactive and defensive) and advisory work.
• Effectively building and maintaining strong external and internal relations at a senior level and across global offices.
• Providing guidance and recommendations on IP strategy, policy and practice to the FIFA legal colleagues, internal clients and senior management.
• Overseeing global pre-launch trademark clearance projects, including advising on legal and practical risks of launching products and online/offline communication materials and any risk mitigations steps available.
• Providing IP advisory support including multijurisdictional copyright clearance and advice, copyright registration, internal and external copyrights licensing questions, assignment agreements, use of third-party trademarks and FIFA trademarks, IP clauses in commercial agreements, website content, IP waivers and other issues.
• Leading the global dispute strategy (cancellations, oppositions and litigation) before IP registries, courts and customs authorities.
• Supporting the global brand protection teams at FIFA.
• Drafting, negotiating and advising on a broad range of IP related commercial agreements and management of IP transactional work including licensing and IP due diligence exercises.
• Management of a substantial IP budget, operating to maximize budget and resource efficiencies.
• Best practice outside counsel management, including outside counsel selection.
• Extensive cross-functional collaboration with internal clients and stakeholders.
• Guiding other team members and developing more junior team members.
• Supporting FIFA’s subsidiaries, including the FIFA Museum, and the FIFA Foundation with any IP related issues.
• Delivering internal legal training and ad hoc advice on issues relating to FIFA’s IP practices and strategies.

YOUR PROFILE

We work hard at FIFA.
We are dedicated, ambitious and innovative.

And we respect our values. Always.

For all roles, we seek talented people with an entrepreneurial spirit and a global mindset.

The specific competencies we require for this position are:

• Minimum of 8-10 years expertise "on the job" in a multinational IP team with global IP experience in either an in-house IP department or a reputable law firm focusing on intellectual property support for multinationals.
• Fully qualified to practice law (registered on the roll / admitted to the bar of an appropriate jurisdiction) having completed all necessary academic and practical training
• First class written and spoken English language skills, consistent with drafting and negotiating complex, high value and nuanced English language agreements.
• Ability to provide and communicate effectively practical and solutions-based legal advice
• Excellent understanding of the sports marketing, sports merchandising, licensing, retail, digital marketing, sponsorship, licensing, e-commerce and business intelligence industry landscapes
• Excellent negotiation, drafting, problem solving and analytical skills
• Structured, reliable, well-organized with a strong eye for detail
• Ability to perform consistently within a high-performing team, fostering collaboration, driving results, and ensuring the successful achievement of organizational goals.
• Strong commercial acumen with an ability to transfer legal knowledge into commercially and operationally oriented solutions
• Proactive, with a strong sense of personal responsibility with an ability to work autonomously on a wide variety of projects
• Resilient with an ability to competently handle a large workload amid rapidly shifting priorities.
• Open-minded team player with an affinity for working within a variety of cultures and excellent communication skills
• High degree of professionalism and confident demeanor
• Ability to be a good ambassador for FIFA in all manner of external facing situations, including during contractual negotiations, external workshops and during FIFA competition-related assignments
• Ability to create, develop and maintain strong and reliable relationships with FIFA senior management as well as external legal and commercial counterparts
• Willingness to operate outside of comfort zone
• Takes initiative to reflect on how to improve and develop working styles and methods to assist the organization and internal clients
• Native level English (or equivalent), consistent with requirement to draft and negotiate complex and nuanced English language agreements and advice.
• Proficiency in any other FIFA language (French/Spanish) is an asset but not required
• Proficient in Word / PowerPoint / Excel
• Comfortable with international travel

PERKS & BENEFITS

The biggest benefit of a career at FIFA is the privilege to work for the beautiful game and create something that matters.

Alongside that privilege, we also offer some extra perks and benefits:

Health insurance: We offer generous medical, vision, and dental insurance coverage.

Continuous learning: We care about your development and encourage internal mobility, offering a variety of training and education to help achieve it.

Retirement: We offer generous 401(k) employer contributions.

Vacation: Maintain a healthy work/life balance with a generous vacation allowance.

About FIFA

We are FIFA, the global governing body for football.

Our vision is to make football truly global, diverse and inclusive, for the benefit of the entire world. The last FIFA World Cup in Qatar in 2022 attracted more than 5 billion viewers and the last FIFA Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in 2023 was the greatest-ever FIFA Women's World Cup that inspired millions of girls and women around the globe. The opportunities for growth are exciting.

We are a modern organisation with over 850 passionate employees who are Living Football every day. Our headquarters are based in Zurich, Switzerland, and we have offices in Miami and Paris, plus eleven regional offices from New Zealand to India, Congo, Panama and Paraguay.