Acacia Research Corporation announced it has appointed Maureen O’Connell and Katharine Wolanyk to its Board of Directors. These new appointments fill existing vacancies on Acacia’s Board and bring its membership to five directors. Ms. Wolanyk’s career spans the business, legal and engineering fields, with a particular focus in intellectual property. She is a Managing Director at Burford Capital, a leading global finance and investment management firm focused on law with over $3 billion committed to the legal market. She was named a World’s Leading IP Strategist by Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) in 2015 through 2018 and has deep experience within the technology industry. Ms. Wolanyk leads Burford’s intellectual property business as well as its Chicago office. Prior to joining Burford, Ms. Wolanyk was President, Chief Legal Officer and a board member of Soverain Software, an enterprise software company whose patent portfolio has been licensed extensively in the software and Internet retailing industries. Ms. Wolanyk was also intellectual property counsel to a publicly traded IT solutions firm, General Counsel of a managed hosting provider, Senior Vice President of corporate development at a publicly traded enterprise software company, a corporate attorney at Latham & Watkins LLP, and began her career as a systems engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company. Ms. O’Connell is a global business executive, Chief Financial Officer and corporate director recognized for significant value creation through strategic initiatives in a variety of industries including media, education, digital, retail, technology, professional services, biotech, pharma, homebuilding, real estate and insurance. From 2007 to 2017, Ms. O’Connell served as the Chief Financial Officer of Scholastic Corporation. In her role as Chief Financial Officer, Ms. O’Connell had significant experience licensing rights, partnering with trademark and copyright owners and overseeing the protection and assertion of rights on a world basis.