He studied law in Mainz, Germany and Dijon, France. He first became involved in intellectual property as a scientific assistant at the University of Mainz in 1987, where he also wrote his doctoral thesis on trademark and unfair competition law. He then worked as an auditing assistant at a large German auditing firm for two years, before becoming in-house counsel in the trademark department of chemical and pharmaceutical company Hoechst AG in 1992; he was appointed deputy head of that department in 1997. In 1998 Dr Best co-founded the firm that is now BEST Rechtsanwälte, which mainly specialises in trademark, design, domain, copyright, unfair competition and advertising law.