Week 7 Guest Speaker: Don McGowan of The Pokemon Company International

This week Don McGowan of the Pokemon Company International will be making the trek north from his home in Seattle to join us. Don will talk about video game contracts and turning IP into a franchise. Don is particularly well qualified on these subjects. He has, since August 2008, been the General Counsel of The Pokémon Company International. His responsibilities include oversight of all video game work for every game the company has produced during that time, many of which have sold over 10 million units worldwide and include titles produced for the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii, as well as a free-to-play PC title based on the Pokémon trading card game. He has also handled all TV and movie deals for the Pokémon property outside of Asia, as well as all merchandise licensing in that same geography, and was instrumental in creating Pokémon’s recent Pokémon TV app for iOS and Android (over 1 million downloads in the first week).

Before Pokémon, Don was the head attorney for Microsoft Game Studios where he had sole responsibility for all games published by Microsoft or licensed using Microsoft IP for the Xbox 360, PC, Nintendo DS, and mobile platforms. The games he worked on included Halo, Mass Effect, Project Gotham Racing and Forza Motorsport, and Flight Simulator; each of those was a multi-million unit seller. He also worked in Microsoft’s government affairs department where his responsibilities included briefing Congressional and state legislative representatives and officials on technology-related issues. Prior to that, Don worked as a litigator in Montreal, Canada for Osler and Stikeman. He has also been a failed standup comic and paid his way through law school in part by narrating romance novel books-on-tape.

Don speaks English and French fluently with some German and Spanish. His outside interests include teaching his Entertainment Law class at the University of Washington, as well as rugby, and (really slow) marathon running.

We are very fortunate to have Don join us.

Jon