NEW YORK (May 11) – Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton announced today that Partner Lisa Pearson, Associate Jill Tomlinson, and Trademark Specialist Sam Kilb, have been named recipients of the prestigious 2016 Burton Award for distinguished legal writing. Ms. Pearson, Ms. Tomlinson, and Mr. Kilb were selected for their award-winning article, “The Universal Language of Non-Verbal Design Marks,” which originally appeared in the November 2015 issue of Managing Intellectual Property magazine. The article examines how numerous global brands have adopted design marks without words as their primary branding device and the challenges they present from a trademark perspective in the United States.

Ms. Pearson, Ms. Tomlinson, and Mr. Kilb will be honored with other award winners at the 17th Anniversary Burton Award Ceremony at the Library of Congress on May 23. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer will serve as the featured speaker. This is the second time Ms. Pearson has received this prestigious award, and the second year in a row that Kilpatrick Townsend attorneys have been honored.

The Burton Foundation, a non-profit program, is run in association with the Library of Congress, and is co-sponsored by the American Bar Association. Each year, the Burton Foundation honors excellence in legal writing. This honor is given to only 35 authors from over 1,000 entries submitted by the nation’s top law firms.

Lisa Pearson, a partner in Kilpatrick Townsend’s New York office, is an experienced litigator and counselor specializing in copyright, trademark, unfair competition, licensing and Internet disputes. She has successfully represented clients across a broad spectrum of industries in cutting edge cases in the field. She also designs and implements comprehensive policing, enforcement, anti-dilution and anti-counterfeiting programs for many well-known rights owners.

Recognized as an Outstanding Woman Lawyer by the National Law Journal, among other top rankings, Ms. Pearson is a trained mediator and member of the International Trademark Association (INTA) Trademark Mediators Network, Chair of the Marques IP Outer Borders Team, and an active member of the New York City Bar Association Women in the Legal Profession Committee. She speaks and writes frequently on intellectual property issues and is the Editor-in- Chief of Street Smarts for Women Lawyers (City Bar Women in the Legal Profession Committee 2016) and co-author of the chapter on Settlement Techniques in Intellectual Property Counseling and Litigation (LexisNexis 2014).

Jill Tomlinson focuses her practice on domestic and international trademark and copyright matters, particularly trademark portfolio management and client counseling in connection with complex multi-jurisdictional trademark clearance, filing, prosecution and enforcement issues. She provides sophisticated and strategic global trademark portfolio advice and counseling for clients in a wide range of industries including social media, computer technology, the arts and entertainment, luxury goods, retail services, investment banking and brokerage, and others. Ms. Tomlinson has been recognized as a 2013, 2014 and 2015 New York Metro "Rising Star" in the area of Intellectual Property by Super Lawyers magazine and currently serves as a Vice-Chair of the USPTO Trademark Inter Partes Committee for the American Bar Association Section of Intellectual Property Law (ABA-IPL), and as a Member of the Indigenous Rights Committee of the International Trademark Association (INTA).

Sam Kilb was a summer associate at Kilpatrick Townsend in 2015. As part of the firm’s trademark and copyright team, he works on a broad range of intellectual property matters, including trademark clearance, prosecution, and enforcement, drafting license agreements, and recovery of infringing domain names.

During law school, Mr. Kilb gained experience as an extern for Authentic Brands Group, a brand development and licensing company, in addition to externships at the Media Law Resource Center and New York State Attorney General – Charities Bureau. His note, “Fixing Financial Fair Play: How to Make European Soccer’s Salary Cap Stick,” was published in the Indonesian Journal of International and Comparative Law.

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