SAN DIEGO (June 23) — Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton announced today that two partners from the firm’s San Diego office were recognized by the prestigious 2016 Legal 500 US. William Shaffer, Managing Partner for the firm’s San Diego office, was recognized in the Patent: Prosecution (Including Re-Examination and Post-Grant Proceedings) category and Partner Kandace Watson was recognized in the Mergers & Acquisitions and Buyouts: M&A: Middle-Market (Sub-$500m) category. The firm was recommended in nine practice areas.

Legal 500 researchers and editors examine all of the significant firms in each country and make recommendations of the top firms and features select attorneys in each legal specialty including those honored as an elite “Leading Lawyer.”

Kilpatrick Townsend was recommended in the following nine practice areas:

• Intellectual property – Copyright
• Intellectual property - Patents: Portfolio Management and Licensing
• Intellectual property – Patent: Prosecution (Including Re-Examination and Post-Grant Proceedings)
• Intellectual property: Trade Secrets
• Intellectual property - Trademarks: Litigation (Tier 1)
• Intellectual property - Trademarks: Non-Contentious (Including Prosecution, Portfolio Management, and Licensing)(Tier 1)
• Media, technology, and telecoms - Technology: Outsourcing
• M&A/corporate and commercial - M&A: Middle-Market (sub-$500m)
• Real estate and construction - Construction (Including Construction Litigation)

Mr. Shaffer focuses his practice on patent prosecution and counseling, patent portfolio building/management, patent analysis and post-grant patent procedures, including reexamination and reissue proceedings. He has been the lead or co-lead attorney for a dozen reexaminations, including both inter partes and ex parte matters, many of which involved patents in litigation, representing both patent owners and challengers. For more information on Mr. Shaffer, please click here.

Ms. Watson heads the Mergers and Acquisitions, Securities and Corporate Team in Southern California and leads the Corporate Department's Southern California Chemical & Life Sciences and Medical Devices Teams. She has extensive experience representing companies, corporate boards and executives in complex transactions, in numerous industries, with an emphasis on healthcare and pharmaceutical, internet and media, biomedical, software and technology, oil and gas-petrochemicals and food and beverage companies. For more information on Ms. Watson, please click here.

About Legal 500

The Legal 500 Series, now in its 25th year, is widely acknowledged as the world’s largest legal referral guide. This year, more than 180,000 in-house counsel and lawyers have been surveyed and interviewed globally. The Legal 500 is an independent guide, and firms and individuals are recommended purely on merit. For more information, please visit: http://www.legal500.com/.

For more information about Kilpatrick Townsend, please visit: www.kilpatricktownsend.com.

Follow the firm on Twitter: @KTS_Law.

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