By: Victoria Slind-Flor
Source: www.bloomberg.com
Category: Trademark Infringement
If Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s patent litigation is the “thermonuclear war” over smartphone technology and design that co-founder Steve Jobs pledged to his biographer, Noreen Krall is its field marshal.
Krall has become a familiar sight in courtrooms around the world as Apple’s chief litigation counsel. Her greatest victory came Aug. 24, when a California jury ordered Samsung Electronics Co., the biggest smartphone maker, to pay Apple more than $1 billion for infringing patents related to the iPhone.
“There is no historical precedent for what Noreen Krall is doing,” said John Thorne, who ran Verizon Communications Inc.’s intellectual-property team before joining Kellogg Huber in Washington this year. “Good generalship produces results like Noreen has gotten. She’s mastering big decisions, like which law firms to hire, how to manage resources, how much of Tim Cook’s time to take.”
Krall, 47, and her boss, General Counsel Bruce Sewell, have amassed a team of lawyers from inside Apple and some of the top U.S. law firms to fight Samsung, HTC Corp. (2498) and Google’s Motorola Mobility unit over Google’s Android mobile operating system and the smartphones and tablets that run on it.
Her job includes understanding the patent rules and court procedures in more than three dozen jurisdictions, making sure arguments are consistent, providing feedback and keeping her team motivated. She observes her lawyers’ arguments from benches or public seating in the back of courtrooms, leaving with them at the end of the day.
Kristin Huguet, a spokeswoman for Apple, said Krall and other officials wouldn’t comment for this story.
Krall, a New York native, was trained as an electrical engineer. Two of her daughters are in college pursuing engineering degrees.
Before moving to Apple, Krall spent five years managing Sun Microsystems Inc.’s 14,000 patents as chief intellectual- property counsel.
Krall joined an Apple team that viewed Android device makers as a threat to its core business of selling distinctively designed consumer electronics at a premium price and with industry-leading profit margins.
She is a founding member of a group of female intellectual- property lawyers called the Chipsters that puts on events to share tips on being powerful women and mothers in male-dominated Silicon Valley.
A finalist this year for the annual Global Counsel Award for intellectual-property lawyers, selected by corporation lawyers and law-firm partners, she’s a shoo-in for next year, said Thorne, the former Verizon lawyer.
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-11/apple-samsung-reddit-directv-intellectual-property.html
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