Lisa S. Glasser

Lisa S. Glasser is both an IP litigator and a manager who serves on Irell & Manella LLP's three-person firmwide management committee, on the executive committee and as vice chair of the litigation group.

In a recent, seldom-matched feat over a year-and-a-half span, she achieved six trial wins in complex cases, resulting in more than $900 million in damages, a permanent injunction and a key defense victory.

So, she took time off? "A bit here and there," she said. Glasser has found a unique way to combine her career with her motherhood duties. Her kids are at the junior high and high school age. "They're interested in what I do, and I can bounce ideas off them. It's a great way to spend time with them and to gauge the appropriate level of complexity to present to juries," she added.

This year, she'd barely caught her breath before another big win came along.

In April 2024, she achieved a $142 million damages award for her Texas-based client G+ Communications LLC after persuading a federal jury that Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.'s Galaxy smartphones infringe its patents. The sum is a significant upgrade from an original jury award of $67.5 million that Chief U.S. District Judge J. Rodney Gilstrap of Marshall, Texas, threw out after concluding the original jury was confused over whether to award a lump sum or a running royalty. G+ Communications LLC v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. et al., 2:22-cv-00078 (E.D. Tex., filed March 14, 2022).

"I've been busy and productive," she said.

Glasser has been with Irell since 2003 after graduating magna cum laude from Duke University School of Law with an award for outstanding achievement in intellectual property and technology law. She has a B.A. in economics, summa cum laude, from the University of St. Thomas. She clerked for the late Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In October 2023, as co-lead counsel, Glasser scored a $240 million verdict for StreamScale Inc. in a patent infringement suit against Cloudera. The case involved technology used to efficiently store data. After a four-day trial, the jury found that Cloudera infringed all of the asserted claims of the three patents at issue. StreamScale Inc. v. Cloudera Inc., 6:21-cv-00198 (E.D. Tex., filed March 2, 2021).

The case was significant not only for the verdict size, but because StreamScale's technology underpins modern data storage, particularly on the cloud.

And Glasser was effective in humanizing inventor Michael Anderson for the jury. "It really helps the jury appreciate how the invention at issue came to be," she said.

-- John Roemer