Nokia European patent chief set for senior Bird & Bird role

BIRD & Bird has boosted its London IP team with the hire of Nokia's head of European patent litigation.

Ari Laakkonen will join as a senior consultant after spending four years at Nokia managing litigation across European jurisdictions.

He said: "I'm looking forward to re-entering private practice and the challenges of serving clients' needs rather than being the client."

Nokia has been a longstanding client of Bird & Bird's and the firm has been acting for the Finnish mobile phone company on a series of patent disputes in the High Court.

Morag Macdonald, co-head of IP at Bird & Bird, said: "His experience of complex electronic patent litigation from the client side will be very valuable to our group, which is increasingly working alongside clients in large multijurisdictional patent actions."