Lisa Kobialka

Kobialka learned how to read a room while sitting on a stage.

The partner with Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP in Menlo Park had a prior profession she said has been very helpful in her law career: concert violinist. Kobialka once spent nine months on the road with the Merola Opera Program, a touring company of the San Francisco Opera.

“It was one of the best things I ever did,” she said. “I got to see the whole United States.”

The discipline of studying music from a young age and the ability to quickly determine the mood of an audience have paid off in her legal career as well. Among other awards, Managing Intellectual Property magazine named her their California Litigator of the Year for 2016.

In the past two years, Kobialka and her firm have won two patents infringement cases for the technology company Finjan Holdings Inc., with verdicts totaling $55 million. In 2015, she was part of a team that won a $30 million patent infringement case in Prism Technologies LLC v. Sprint Spectrum, 12-CV00123 (D.C. Neb., filed April 4, 2012). The verdict was affirmed on appeal in March.

More recently, she has been working on Magic Leap Inc. v. Bradski, 16-CV2852 (N.D. Cal., filed May 26, 2016). The suit, against a former high-level employee who left to form a competing company, is likely the first filed in California under the Defend Trade Secrets Act.

This is a law signed last year by President Barack Obama which Kobialka said finally places trade secrets on par with patents and copyright in federal law.

One of her colleagues on the Magic Leap case, and many others, is fellow Kramer Levin partner Paul J. Andre. He’s also her husband. They have two children, an 11-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter.

Kobialka is also known for something else: speaking out about gender issues in technology and the law. She’s been quoted in the press and appeared on panels speaking about how women can make sure their voices are heard in these traditionally male-dominated fields.

“I’m outspoken because I have a 5-year-old daughter,” Kobialka said. “I would like her to be in the workforce and be able to say, ‘It’s not the same as what my mother experienced.’”

— Malcolm Maclachlan