Thomas Legler is a partner and member of Pestalozzi’s Litigation and Arbitration group and of the IP&TMT group in Geneva. His practice focuses on representing corporate and private clients in international and national arbitration and litigation cases. He also regularly acts as chairman, sole arbitrator or co-arbitrator under the ICC Rules, Swiss Rules, or in ad hoc panels. He is a member of the ICC Swiss National Committee and one of the Swiss delegates on the indicative list of arbitrators of the WTO. He also serves as arbitrator for WIPO including for domain name disputes. In addition, Thomas Legler advises corporate and private clients in the field of intellectual property (among others trademark, copyright, and patent law, and in respect of distribution and license agreements), IT, e-commerce, telecommunications and data protection law, as well as entertainment and media. In 2012, Swiss Parliament elected Thomas Legler as deputy judge of the Federal Patent Court.

After his law studies at the University of Bern, Thomas Legler was admitted in 1988 to the Bern Bar and in 1991 to the Geneva Bar. He obtained in 1993 a DES (LLM) and, in 1996 he graduated (Dr.iur.) from the University of Geneva.

Thomas Legler is author of several publications, in particular in the field of arbitration, IP and Internet issues, and he is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (FCIArb) and a member of the Swiss Arbitration Association (ASA), the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) and the Dubai International Arbitration Centre (DIAC). In addition, he is a member of the International Trademark Association (INTA) and of the International Bar Association (IBA), where he serves as an Officer of Committee L (intellectual property and entertainment law).

Thomas Legler is recommended as litigator and arbitrator in professional publications and listings, such as the «The Legal 500», «Patent Law Experts», «Who’s Who Legal» and «Chambers and Partners Europe». The latter indicated in 2015: «Thomas Legler is applauded for his skill as an arbitrator. He has a particular focus on the life sciences industry.»

Thomas Legler works in German, French and English and has basic knowledge of Italian.

Editor IP Law and Author
Jusletter

Publications

A complete listing of Dr. Thomas Legler's publications can be found here.