About

Michael Pinczuk, vice president intellectual property and business partner strategy and ventures at medical equipment company ResMed is a highly skilled lawyer with multinational jurisdictional experience and is a true exemplar of a rising star. He explains that he was ‘very lucky to start my career in-house in 2007 as a paralegal at Medtronic [and] progressed to associate legal counsel in 2009. We were a small team then, so I was given a lot of autonomy in my role focusing on all areas supporting the sales and compliance functions including privacy, competition law and product liability’. His experience was diverse ranging from supporting litigation in Malaysia to setting up a compliance programme in Singapore. In 2011 he moved to ResMed as legal counsel – Asia Pacific supporting all legal services across the region. He says that it was a ‘great opportunity, as ResMed has a large presence in Australia, which is unique for a large multinational company. I got to work on a variety of legal work from incorporating European entities to successfully concluding litigation in India’. From there, Pinczuk was promoted to senior legal counsel – global supplier alliance where he supported the procurement businesses, seeing a complete change in perspective to be at the customer end of the spectrum during negotiations. He identifies that‘as the role was global, I was lucky enough to travel extensively and negotiate significant contracts to drive value for our company. At every step of my career I have been focused on attaining broader experience’. In 2016 he was appointed associate general counsel – innovation and operations leading a team which provided legal services to ResMed’s operations teams globally, including facilities, logistics, and procurement as well as industrial relations, and quality and regulatory teams. Finally, in 2017 he ‘took a leap of faith’ and applied for his current role. He highlights that this experience has been ‘by far the most challenging and rewarding of my career. Leading ResMed’s global intellectual property group has allowed me to gain valuable business experience managing our intangible assets which includes our 5,500 plus pending and issued patents and designs globally. We have a very strong team located across the globe and pride ourselves on delivering best in class legal services’. Asking Pinczuk about his career and trends he feels will continue to have the greatest impact, he identifies that data-driven legal technology will be a major focus and it will be used to drive efficient decision making in ways unfamiliar to traditional legal functions. He also highlights that is necessary to ‘invest in your people, push them out of their comfort zones and broaden their experience. The value will follow. General counsel will need to have a sound understanding of the way technology will impact their businesses and functions to ensure they are delivering the most value. Experience in coordinating global litigation will remain a core skill set. Soft skills are obviously important and underestimated – the ability to communicate clearly and foster change quickly and with purpose will be essential. An understanding of value, its creation and destruction will also be key’. Touted as a rising star thanks to his abundant know-how in the sector and how this will impact his ability to guide future industry developments, Pinczuk has all the tools necessary to be at the forefront of these issues as they develop in Australia and further afield.