About

After six years of working for Roschier Attorneys, Eki Korpiola moved in-house. In June 2002, he joined Nokia Corporation, the global communications and IT giant based in Finland, spending six and a half years there. A legal counsel for four years, responsible for various matters ranging from software out-licensing to usage of Open Source Software at Nokia Mobile Phones, Korpiola also acted for Nokia as privacy representative to the European Information and Communications Technology Association (EICTA) and was a leadership team member in various business units. During this period Korpiola was also the vice chair of the Finnish IT Law Association. He was promoted to senior legal counsel (Devices Research and Development) and relocated to New York in October 2006, focusing on technology transactions and out-licensing of Nokia’s 3G modem technology. Upon his return to Finland and joining the sporting goods company Amer Sports in September 2009, Korpiola is head of legal and IPR for Suunto, one of Amer’s subsidiaries that manufactures and markets connected sports watches, dive computers, compasses and precision instruments. He has shifted the perception of legal being a ‘back-office function’ in a number of ways. This includes creating new Intellectual Property processes and structures, following a merge of the legal and IPR departments. This has facilitated expedient and timely protection of the company’s innovation and branding needs as well as increasing the department’s steer of the IPR portfolio development, particularly important considering the technology out-licensing business requirements and the change from traditional stand-alone sport watches to smart watches with mobile connectivity and phone applications. In addition he has created standard legal templates for the most important fields of business that are readily available for Suunto’s employees via a cutting edge internal intranet-based tool. As a result of Korpiola’s work, legal and IPR matters have become an integral part of management attention and legal matters are dealt with from the planning stage of each project. As testament to Korpiola’s initiatives, the department has been promoted to become part of Suunto´s global management team. Some of Korpiola’s other career highlights include the significant divestment of three Suunto non-core business functions. After said divestments, Korpiola was the lead counsel in Amer Sports’ acquisition of Nikita and Sports-Tracker brands. Korpiola has led on a number of successful defences of patent assertions and litigations and oversaw the creation of a technology out-licensing business.In addition to demonstrating his expertise in intellectual property, licensing and privacy law Korpiola has shown his business and commercial nous too. He says ‘due to its resources, the legal team must be able to multitask in different areas of expertise in a very cost-efficient manner. This calls for prioritisation of matters, great team work within Suunto and Amer Sports