Team size: four

Can you briefly explain how the legal team is structured, highlighting key individuals and their role within the department?  

The legal team consists of four people, three of which are senior legal counsels and subject matter experts who directly report to the senior vice president legal and compliance — Marianne Frydenlund.  

The senior vice president of legal and compliance is part of the executive team is Nordic Semiconductor and reports directly to the CEO. Marianne Frydenlund has 13 years of experience as an in-house counsel and has been with Nordic for four years. Marianne is the chair of the Norwegian Company Lawyers Association and sits on the board of TechForum – a group of experts appointed by the Norwegian Lawyers Association. Marianne is a frequent speaker and spokeswoman for FRAND licensing terms and “license to all”, advocating the importance of component level licensing related to standard essential patents, especially related to Nordic Semiconductor’s 4G and Wi-Fi products. Marianne also serves as the secretary to the board of directors.

The legal team supports the entire portfolio of Nordic Semiconductor group companies with all legal matters, from sales and supply chain to R&D and product development. Nordic Semiconductor currently employs over 1150 people across 27 offices around the world. 

Senior Legal Counsel and Privacy Responsible — Christian Werner Skovly joined the team at the start of 2021, transferring from his role as Senior Associate at the tier-one TMT practice of Oslo-based boutique law firm Føyen. Christian advises on matters related to information security, data privacy and employment, as well as Nordics recent push into commercial cloud services. He currently leads a Legal Tech project that will see Nordic Semiconductor hand over review of non-disclosure agreements to machine learning. 

Senior Legal Counsel Martin Ekelund joined the team at the start of 2021, from a role as VP Legal and Licensing with the owner of a much contentious international IP portfolio. Martin brings extensive experience in working proactively with marketing law, intellectual property and licensing from international businesses such as Inter IKEA and Equinor and has been listed as a leading in-house counsel in The Legal 500’s GC Powerlist Norway 2017 and 2019. He supports our R&D, Marketing and Sales teams in a period of very rapid growth. 

Senior Legal Counsel and Group Compliance Officer Linda Pettersson joined the team in September 2021, bringing broad experience from similar positions in global organizations such as Norsk Hydro  

and Wallenius Wilhelmsen. Linda is responsible for supporting the Board of Directors and CEO in providing oversight of and ensuring that relevant compliance risks are managed effectively and consistently throughout the Nordic Group. She provides compliance advisory throughout the Group, continuously improving its compliance framework to meet the increasing ESG expectations from relevant stakeholders.