If the law's got a name in Silicon Valley, it's Lucy Haeran Koh. The 45-year-old trial judge presides over a courtroom on the fourth floor of a federal building on South 1st Street in San Jose, CA. Her skeptical preliminary rulings helped force Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe Systems to settle a landmark antitrust hiring case on Thursday. Meanwhile, she has been ably presiding over the main battle in a global intellectual-property war pitting Apple against Samsung Electronics and other mobile phone manufacturers that rely on Google's Android operating system. For all its ferocity, the epic smartphone-IP confrontation will one day end in an historic cross-licensing truce -- or at least that's what the author predicted in a Bloomberg Businessweek cover story. The shape of the phone settlement, like the contours of the financially less-spectacular hiring-antitrust resolution, will reflect the guidance Koh provides in written and verbal pronouncements from the bench.