Perkins Coie is pleased to announce that James G. Snell has joined the firm’s Palo Alto office as a partner in the Privacy & Security practice. Snell was most recently a partner with Bingham McCutchen in Silicon Valley, where he was co-chair of Bingham’s Intellectual Property Group and co-chair of the firm’s Privacy & Security Group.

“Jim joins our nationally recognized privacy practice and adds to the depth of privacy counsellors and litigators in the group,” said Chris Kao, office managing partner of Perkins Coie’s Palo Alto office. “In addition, Jim’s extensive privacy and Internet-related class action litigation experience complements our strong consumer class action practice here in California.”

Snell counsels clients in numerous complex matters involving Internet and privacy issues, patent litigation, trade secrets, data security issues and class action issues. He has extensive experience in privacy policies; Internet and marketing issues; behavioral advertising; junk email laws; the Communications Decency Act; spyware issues; computer crimes defined by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, Stored Communications Act, and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and matters involving the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Snell defended the first lawsuit filed under the CAN-SPAM Act and the first lawsuit filed under Michigan’s Child Protection Registry. Snell’s patent litigation experience includes representing clients in various jurisdictions including California, Massachusetts, Texas, New Hampshire, Utah and the International Trade Commission, among other jurisdictions. He has represented several foreign clients in patent litigation, including companies based in China, Taiwan and Japan.

“Jim is a wonderful addition to our practice,” said Jim McCullagh, co-chair of Perkins Coie’s Privacy & Security practice. “His experience immediately adds to our ability to represent clients in a wide range of federal and state privacy matters including those involving the California Invasion of Privacy Act, Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), CAN-SPAM Act, and Song-Beverly Act compliance and litigation.”

Snell earned his J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law and his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) as a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP) and is co-chair of the IAPP’s San Francisco Bay Area Knowledgenet program, Cyberspace Law Committee of the State Bar of California (former chair), and the San Francisco Bay area Intellectual Property Inns of Court.

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