Professor Mark Lemley spoke with Business Week-Bloomberg's Joel Rosenblatt, Karen Gullo and Douglas MacMillan regarding the foreman of the Apple/Samsung case and his own background with patents.

Jurors who zipped through more than 600 questions in three days to arrive at their verdict in the intellectual-property battle between Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) had as their leader an engineer with a patent to his name.

Velvin Hogan, foreman of the nine-member panel, told the court during jury selection last month that he spent seven years working with lawyers to obtain his own patent, one covering “video compression software,” a hobby of his.

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"If there is one juror who seems more clearly knowledgeable than the others, the jury will often look to that person to help them work through the issues, and perhaps elect him foreman,” Mark Lemley, a Stanford Law School Professor, said yesterday in an interview.