Victoria F. Maroulis

Maroulis has spent the last seven years at the center of an epic smartphone war between Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc.

The case — a series of patent, design patent and trade dress disputes — began in April 2011 and has “involved virtually every type of intellectual property known,” said Maroulis, who has served as one of Samsung’s lead trial counsel since the beginning.

“Apple alleged that Samsung infringed a variety of Apple’s patents and design patents” for smartphones and tablets, Maroulis said. “Samsung also sued Apple for infringement ... so there were claims going both ways.”

She said the case has been “challenging on many levels.”

“First of all, there’s some very complex issues of intellectual property law,” Maroulis said. Although some of the technology may be hard for a jury to understand, “you need to be able to tell a story about your client’s patents in a ... simple to understand, non-condescending way,” she added.

At the first trial, Maroulis said the entire courtroom was filled with journalists.

“When you have so much media scrutiny, you need to be sure that everything’s presented in a top-notch way and it’s presented coherently and people can understand it,” she explained.

In December 2016, the United States Supreme Court unanimously reversed a nearly $400 million judgment against Samsung. According to Maroulis, this is the first design patent case to reach the Supreme Court in more than 100 years.

There have been five trials so far, she said, with another scheduled for later this year.

— Skylar Dubelko