A looming trial in the case will showcase two of the country's most fearsome patent litigators — Douglas Lumish of Latham & Watkins for TransPerfect and Charles Verhoeven of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan for MotionPoint.

There's a reason Lumish has been a hot ticket lately on the lateral market: In his first trial since joining Latham in May, the IP litigator knocked out patent claims against TransPerfect Translation International that had threatened to derail the company's business, leaving his adversaries saddled with a $1 million damages award instead.

Four years after the Supreme Court landed the second part of its one-two punch in Twombly and Iqbal, we caught up with the lawyer whose civil rights case on behalf of a Pakistani detainee ultimately changed the face of pleading-stage litigation.

It took Calhoon and his partners at Baker Botts nearly a decade to get claims that Vivendi breached the terms of a multibillion deal with their client in front of a jury. But it paid off on Monday, when Calhoon won a $956 million verdict for Liberty Media Corp.