Description:

The Assistant General Counsel, Merchandise, handles the legal work for merchandise matters. This position involves working closely with the merchandise teams to provide legal advice, training and business solutions for various product and merchandising issues, including regulatory compliance (e.g. FDA, CPSC, Customs, and EPA), vendor contracts and disputes, governmental investigations and inquiries, and marketing of products. The Assistant General Counsel, Merchandise, will work daily with internal business partners, outside counsel, vendors, and governmental agencies on a wide variety of legal regulatory and merchandising issues

Principal Duties & Responsibilities:

Review and approve private labels for company and register and maintain portfolio of trademarks.
Performing initial trademark clearance searches.
Review of license agreements for products.
Assisting in legal aspects of company websites.
Review and approval of all merchandise advertisement and marketing materials.
Responding to and resolving all claims of intellectual property infringement for all company departments, including working with outside counsel as necessary.
Daily interaction with buyers and import specialists regarding product compliance and testing issues.
Developing standards and testing protocol for compliance with governmental and industry standards.
Responding to inquiries from governmental agencies regarding product issues, including Consumer Product Safety Commission, Customs and Border Patrol, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Trade Commission, Food and Drug Administration, International Trade Commission, U.S. Department of Agriculture, state regulatory agencies, state Attorneys General, consumer groups, press and customers regarding products.
Advising management on legal issues affecting merchandise.
Oversight of reporting incidents of injury, dangerous product defects or non-compliance as required to regulatory agencies.
Coordinating product recalls.

Position Requirements:
Office work environment, 40+ work hours per week

Minimum Requirements/Qualifications:

Member of Virginia State Bar.
10+ years' experience with expertise in handling intellectual property matters, including copyright, patent, trademark and trade dress issues. Familiarity with advertising law is beneficial.
Experience in merchandise compliance issues, including familiarity with CPSC requirements, CPSIA and testing standards for retail industry.

Job Related Skills:

Excellent communication skills are critical to the job function- communicating with and building relationships with internal business partners, vendors, and outside. Part of this communication is imploring good judgment.
Strong analytical, problem- solving, multi-tasking and prioritization capabilities
Capacity to operate both strategically and tactically as needed
Attention to detail and accuracy

Computer Skills: Intermediate to advanced working knowledge of Microsoft Office desktop applications, inclusive of Excel, Access, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. Exposure to web-based applications including web forms, portals and workflow tools.