InsideCounsel » November 2007
Driving Ahead
Callaway Golf’s general counsel takes the competition into the courtroom.
Recreational golf tends to be a very gentle game. You wake up early on a Sunday morning, mosey over to the local course with a buddy or two and spend the next few hours knocking a small white dimpled ball around a lush green landscape. You end up competing more with yourself than your golfing partners.
On the business side, golf is a blood sport. The companies that produce the clubs and balls stored in your car’s trunk spend a lot of time at each others’ throats—mostly over claims of patent and trademark infringement.
Litigation between companies in this industry is par for the course. What fuels these suits is an ber-competitive market in which consumers are constantly in search of a ball or a club that will help them hit farther and more accurately. Companies invest millions of dollars in R&D and marketing to help consumers achieve those objectives with their products. It’s up to the legal departments of these companies to protect that investment.
For Callaway Golf Co., one of the most recognized brands in the industry, that job falls on the shoulders of Texas-born Michael Rider, the company’s general counsel. Rider joined the San Diego-based company in 1996 as associate general counsel after managing antitrust litigation for a number of years as a senior attorney for American Airlines. Before that he was an associate at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.
Q: I understand that you initially wanted to be a pharmacist.
A: I did. When I was in high school I worked for a small independent pharmacy as a delivery boy. And being exposed to that area, I thought it was a really good career. Pharmacists were entrepreneurs, they got to make their own hours and they made a pretty good living. Those were all things that appealed to me. I actually earned my undergraduate degree in pharmacy from the University of Arizona.
Q: How did you end up in law?
A: By my fourth year in college I realized I wasn’t that interested in owning an independent pharmacy or working for a chain. My best friend always had planned to go to law school, and we shared a lot of the same traits in terms of being outgoing and analytical and being comfortable on our feet. So I took the LSAT and went to law school at the University of San Diego.
Q: How did you end up at Callaway?
A: I was very happy at American Airlines, but Callaway was a great opportunity for a number of reasons. First of all, it was a smaller company, so the opportunity to have a bigger impact was obvious. And I got to work again with Steve McCracken [a former partner at Gibson Dunn who was GC of Callaway when Rider joined]. It was an opportunity to get back to San Diego, where my wife and I had met in law school. But probably most important, it was Callaway—a small company with a big brand.
Q: Are you a good golfer?
A: I’m OK. When I was hired at Callaway Golf, I had never picked up a golf club in my life. Thankfully, Callaway didn’t hire me to be a golfer. They hired me because I knew how to manage litigation.
Q: Tell me about your role as GC.
A: Well, I really have three main responsibilities. The first one is to direct the company’s litigation, and right now we have a very full plate. We’re dealing with a lot of litigation and a lot of IP disputes. My second job is to serve as the company’s primary antitrust lawyer. My third job is to manage the department.
Q: There seem to be a lot of patent infringement suits being filed in the golf industry.
A: It is a very, very competitive business. If you think about it, we’re competing against much bigger companies [such as Acushnet, the company that owns the Titleist brand; Adidas; Nike; etc.] for a share of the market. One of the areas in which we compete is obtaining and enforcing our IP rights.
