Ms. Samaras is a full-time neutral focusing her ADR practice on complex commercial cases, including disputes involving intellectual property, technology, and business-related issues (see Experience). She also has mediated or arbitrated employment, securities, personal injury, consumer, and other civil matters. For 20 years, Ms. Samaras has served as a sole arbitrator, co-arbitrator, chairperson, and mediator or co-mediator in hundreds of domestic and international cases involving a broad array of contractual arrangements, technologies, and industries. She has also served as an arbitrator in non-binding arbitrations to assist parties in mediation and has performed Expert Determinations.
Ms. Samaras is certified by the International Mediation Institute and is a Fellow of the College of Commercial Arbitrators and the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. She serves as a neutral on an ad hoc basis and for such widely known ADR organizations as the American Arbitration Association and its international arm – ICDR, CPR International Institute for Conflict Prevention and Resolution, the World Intellectual Property Organization, the U.S. Council for International Business (ICC), National Arbitration and Mediation, United States International Trade Commission, and U.S. District Court for the E.D. of Pennsylvania.
Before launching her own ADR practice 13 years ago, Ms. Samaras worked as an attorney for 24 years in the corporate and private sectors, for the U.S. government as a staff attorney and law clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and as a Patent Examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the biomedical arts. In addition, she served as in-house counsel for two multi-national companies – a telecommunications company as their Director of Intellectual Property and a pharmaceutical/drug delivery company as their Vice President of Intellectual Property, Legal.
Ms. Samaras has held many leadership roles with professional organizations including the College of Commercial Arbitrators – Board of Directors and Executive Committee; ABA Section of Dispute Resolution – Chair, Executive Committee member, and Council member; ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law – Chair of Division VI and Content Advisory Board member; and American Intellectual Property Law Association – Board of Directors and Committee Chair.
She is a frequent speaker on ADR topics for bar and professional organizations, and ADR institutions. Ms. Samaras has written extensively about ADR topics including: as the editor and an author of the ABA published book, ADR Advocacy, Strategies, and Practices for Intellectual Property and Technology Cases (Second Edition); and as the author of a chapter on selecting arbitrators in the book Arbitrating Commercial Disputes in the United States, published by Practicing Law Institute (2018).
Ms. Samaras holds a B.S. and an M.S. degree in the life sciences, a J.D. degree, and an LL.M. degree in Patent and Trade Regulation Law.
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