Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton

Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton

Headquarters	Atlanta, Georgia, United States
No. of offices	17
No. of attorneys	620+
Major practice areas	General practice
Date founded	1860 (San Francisco, California)
Company type	Limited liability partnership
Website
www.kilpatricktownsend.com

Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton is an international law firm headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The firm has seventeen offices, including U.S. offices in Georgia, California, Colorado, North Carolina, New York, Washington State, and the District of Columbia, and international offices in Japan, Shanghai, and Sweden. The firm is particularly well known for its intellectual property practice, and has represented major clients in cutting-edge IP cases. For example, the firm has represented Google in litigation related to its Google Print product,^[1] and represented Sony in its suit against 21-year-old hacker George Hotz for jailbreaking the PS3.^[2]

The firm was recognized by American Lawyer magazine as one of the country's best law firms to work for. It has won numerous awards for its role in community service, and it credits fifty hours of charity work per year toward its attorneys' billable hour requirements.

History

Kilpatrick Stockton was formed by the 1997 merger of two firms, Kilpatrick & Cody of Atlanta, Georgia, and Petree Stockton of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The firm that would become Kilpatrick & Cody was founded in 1874 by Milton W. Candler and William S. Thomson. The firm became in-house counsel for the Coca-Cola company, and as early as 1893 secured federal registration of the Coca-Cola trademark.

In 1978, the firm counseled The Northwestern Bank in a merger with First Union National Bank. The transaction was a harbinger of the mass bank consolidation that would take place in the next three decades. The next year, the firm took on representation of the town of Triana, Alabama, whose water had been polluted by the pesticide DDT. The firm eventually secured a recovery of $26 million, plus all annual health care costs for the injured townspeople.

In 2000, Kilpatrick Stockton successfully represented Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s family in a lawsuit over the CBS network's unauthorized use of the famous "I Have a Dream" speech. In 2001, the firm took on the defense of the Houghton Mifflin Company's parody The Wind Done Gone. In a precedent-setting case, the firm defeated a pre-publication restraining order from Margaret Mitchell's estate.

Also in 2001, the firm participated in a groundbreaking win in the case of Cobell v. Kempthorne.^[3] Elouise Cobell brought a class-action suit on behalf of hundreds of thousands of plaintiffs alleging that the United States mismanaged funds held by it in trust for Native Americans. The plaintiffs prevailed in the first stage of the case, proving that the government mismanaged trust funds. The accounting portion of the case has not been resolved (as of July 2006).

On January 1, 2011, Kilpatrick Stockton and Townsend and Townsend and Crew merged to form Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP.^[4]

In 2011, the firm assisted Sony in its lawsuit against George Hotz and some people associated with the group fail0verflow, for "jailbreaking" the PlayStation 3. This included the attempted subpoena of Hotz's webhost to gather information about visitors to the site, as well as attempted subpoenas of YouTube, Twitter, Blogger and Paypal.^[5][6]

Key people

Partners

Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton has over 270 partners.^[7] The firm's most notable partners include the following:

• Miles J. Alexander was the recipient of the International Trademark Association's 2002 President’s Award.
  • Alexander was honored in 'The Best Lawyers in America 2006' for his prowess in the fields of Alternative Dispute Resolution, Antitrust Law, Corporate Law, and Intellectual Property Law.^[8]
• Rupert Barkoff was named one of the top 10 franchise law practitioners in the world by the International Who's Who of Business Lawyers for 2006.^[9]
• Joseph M. Beck is known for representing clients in high-profile cases.
  • Beck is lead counsel for Google in the Google Print case, and he has represented the family of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in intellectual property matters.
  • Beck also defended the musical group OutKast in 1999, when OutKast was sued by Rosa Parks over one of the group's most successful radio singles, which bore Parks' name as its title.^[10]
  • In 2006, Beck was honored as one of 'The Best Lawyers in America' in the fields of Alternative Dispute Resolution, Entertainment Law, and Intellectual Property Law.^[8]
• Carole Bellis leads the firm's Silicon Valley startup practice.
• William H. Brewster was named one of 'The Best Lawyers in America 2006' in the field of Intellectual Property Law.^[8]
• Keith Harper is one of the United States' leading Native American attorneys.^[11] In 2008, the National Law Journal selected Keith as one of 50 "Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America."
  • Harper has been involved in the Cobell v. Kempthorne case since its inception. He first represented the plaintiffs while working at the Native American Rights Fund, before he joined Kilpatrick Stockton.^[11]
  • Harper is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma,^[12] and serves as an appellate judge on the highest court of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation.^[11]
• Paul Haughey, patent lawyer and novelist
• Susan M. Spaeth serves as the Managing Partner of the firm.
• J. Henry Walker IV serves as the firm Chairman.
• David M. Zacks is a past chairman of the American Cancer Society.^[13]
  • Zacks was named one of 'The Best Lawyers in America 2006' in the fields of Alternative Dispute Resolution, Health Care Law, and Personal Injury Litigation.^[8]

High-profile clients

Practice areas

Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton is a "full-service" law firm,^[14] which means that its attorneys work in essentially all areas of law. Its main practice areas are:

References

External links

• Official website
• Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton companies grouped at OpenCorporates