Tina McKeon says joining a larger firm allows her to focus on her practice rather than administration.
John Disney, Daily Report
Tina McKeon has left the intellectual property boutique she helped found for Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton. As a result, McKeon Meunier Carlin & Curfman, which McKeon launched in spring 2010, is now Meunier Carlin & Curfman.
"It's difficult to leave something that you started and put your heart and soul into, but I found that the practice I have would benefit from the depth and infrastructure a large firm can offer," said McKeon, who joined Kilpatrick as a partner last week.
McKeon focuses her patent prosecution and counseling work on life sciences and brings a team of five with her. Three patent agents, Kimberlynn Davis, Lizette Fernandez and Tiffany Thomas, who like McKeon have Ph.D. degrees, will join on Monday, along with a paralegal, Joey Ward, and an assistant, Christy Rutherford.
McKeon declined to name clients, saying they are still in transition. She said she works with a mix of large companies, startups, universities and research institutions.
Although McKeon has practiced patent law since 1996, she said she's never worked in a general practice firm until now. She was a partner at Fish & Richardson, a national IP boutique, before starting McKeon Meunier Carlin & Curfman 2 1/2 years ago with another Fish & Richardson partner, Andrew Meunier.
Christopher Curfman from Ballard Spahr and Gregory Carlin, who had been IP counsel at Edwards Lifesciences in Irvine, Calif., are the other two principals.
McKeon joined Fish & Richardson in 2006 from a local IP boutique, Needle & Rosenberg, which became part of Philadelphia-based general practice firm Ballard Spahr in 2008.
She cited Kilpatrick's "strong IP group and strong reputation both nationally and internationally" and said she was friends with a number of Kilpatrick lawyers, including Jamie Graham, who is the co-leader of Kilpatrick's health and life sciences team, John McDonald and Virginia Taylor, along with John Pratt, who chairs the firm's IP practice, and James Ewing IV.
"It was not a hard choice," said McKeon.
Graham said in a statement that McKeon's "well-established reputation within the biotechnology community and her extensive background in highly complex research and litigation" will add to Kilpatrick's "deep bench of biotechnology expertise in Atlanta and across the firm."
