Paw Patrol Owner Spin Master Gets New Post-Merger Legal Chief

Spin Master Corp., a Canadian toymaker that last month completed the largest acquisition in its history, has hired Sachin Kanabar to be its general counsel.

Kanabar spent the past six years as the top lawyer for Iovate Health Sciences International Inc., a dietary supplements company known for products such as Hydroxycut and MuscleTech. He joined Spin Master last month, shortly after the Toronto-based company completed its $950 million buy of Melissa & Doug LLC.

Kanabar succeeds Spin Master’s longtime general counsel and corporate secretary Christopher Harrs, who is retiring after spending roughly two decades in those C-suite roles, the company said. Harrs and Kanabar didn’t respond to requests for comment about the transition.

Spin Master’s purchase of Melissa & Doug, a privately held, Wilton, Connecticut-based company known for its low-tech toys and games that seek to engage children in lieu of screen time, added to a toy portfolio that includes Air Hogs, Hatchimals, Etch A Sketch, Rubik’s Cube, and Paw Patrol—the latter a lucrative team of cartoon pups that use their paws to protect the laws.

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman and Toronto’s Torkin Manes advised Spin Master on its purchase of Melissa & Doug, which turned to Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson for outside counsel. Melissa & Doug, whose chief in-house counsel in Susan Matluck Westphal, hired Fried Frank associate Kimberly Mihovics as an assistant corporate counsel in January.

Spin Master paid $50 million in 2020 to buy Rubik’s Brand Ltd., a London-based company behind the famous cube of the same name, to meet pandemic-driven demand by parents looking to entertain kids amid lockdown orders. Spin Master is the smaller of its larger US toy-making rivals Hasbro Inc. and Mattel Inc., the latter of which changed its legal leadership in 2020.

Both companies have sparred with Spin Master in court. The bulk of Spin Master’s US litigation caseload is composed of trademark, patent, and copyright cases, according to Bloomberg Law data. Chicago-based intellectual property boutique Greer, Burns & Crain had a role for the company on more than 50% of its cases in US federal courts within the past five years.

Other law firms handling litigation work for Spin Master during that time were Cooley, DLA Piper, Erise IP, Fox Rothschild, Greenberg Traurig, and Mintz Levin.

New Top Lawyers

Kanabar, Spin Master’s new legal chief, began his career at Canadian firm Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt. He went on to serve as vice president of legal for an electronics affiliate of BCE Inc., better known as Bell Canada, and general counsel for the Canadian arm of LG Electronics Inc.

In 2018, Iovate recruited Kanabar to succeed its longtime former legal chief, Roch Vaillancourt.

After six years away working in the “tumultuous cannabis industry,” Vaillancourt returned to Iovate’s top legal job last month, he said in an email. Vaillancourt got a call in December from Iovate’s deputy chairman asking if he “would come back and here I am,” he said. Vaillancourt most recently was general counsel for Hexo Corp., a Canadian cannabis producer sold last year to Tilray Brands Inc.

Oakville, Ontario-based Iovate, which has faced litigation in recent years over some of its workout and weight loss supplements, has been owned since 2016 by China’s Xiwang Foodstuffs Co. Ltd.