I have been with Zacco in Stockholm for a bit more than eight years. When I left the university in Lund with a law degree, I worked first as a junior judge and later I joined a larger law firm’s IP department. Today, I am part of the legal department as a Senior Partner.
I joined Zacco’s Gothenburg office some 2,5 years ago. My role as Director for the Digital Brand department means that I am responsible for the service offering within digital brands and in charge of aligning it with the rest of Zacco’s services. I have been working with trademarks and domain names both online and offline for the last ten years.
That’s our tasks
Marcus: I have a wide range of job tasks and roles. I serve a number of clients for whom I act as a legal counsel, almost like an in-house. Moreover, I am the key account manager for some larger client accounts. As such, I cooperate closely with colleagues from other regions and business lines, e.g. with Fabio Pezzolato in Copenhagen. I am also highly involved with Zacco’s Asian business and help develop it together with Hajo Peters from Munich. Now that we talk about it, I suddenly realise how many cross-regional cooperations I am engaged in and how much I enjoy these!
Tobias: I focus on developing the Digital Brand department and on making sure that we have a competitive offering for our clients. Also, it is highly important that we combine the digital brand services with the rest, eg. cybersecurity. Apart from that, I am also a team manager and I work as a consultant with a number of clients giving strategic advice on brand use and protection.
How we cooperate
Marcus/Tobias: We have been working closely together for two larger clients that both are groups with a number of subsidiaries. Marcus was the key account manager and Tobias was in charge of the domain name portfolio. We interact a lot even for general counsel and the aim is to involve each other whenever we are in contact with clients. The client benefits from the combination, as you cannot reach such a depth of knowledge on your own. The great advantage with Zacco is that we have highly skilled experts for both fields under the same roof; there is no need to contact external agents.
“Both of us are experts in our respective fields and we feel that as a team, we can answer all questions with precision and in detail. As a result, we attend client meetings confident that we will be able to meet and probably exceed the expectations and the clients usually reward us with their trust.”
We can even challenge each other and discuss topics in front of the client. Such a discussion will only show that we are aiming for their best interest, it will never endanger the underlying respect that our relation builds upon. As we work hand in hand, we avoid common and costly pitfalls for the client. For example, we make sure to orchestrate trademark and domain name registrations. Like this, no third party can misuse public trademark registries and acquire domain names the client needs for their business.
Why we rely on each other
Tobias: Marcus is always extremely well prepared and he knows the client and understands their situation. He is in control, but at the same time relaxed and has excellent social skills. He will do everything to achieve the best possible outcome for a client.
Marcus: We function quite similarly, Tobias is very accessible and he also needs the feeling of control. He is a fantastic communicator with a profound knowledge of his field. I, too, learn a lot from him in our work. We also connect personally and share private things, even if we don’t hang out due to the distance. It makes things so much easier when you like the people you work with.
