Stacy is a seasoned legal strategist, with a focus on patent disputes and other IP matters. Highly successful in law school, she began her career at one of the largest and most established Tampa law firms at the time (the former Fowler White firm) as a products liability litigator and trial attorney. At Fowler White, she was trained by some of Tampa’s best trial lawyers and gained extensive state court litigation and trial experience, becoming part of the regional legal team hired by McDonald’s Corporation to defend food born illness cases. She became known for her skill with expert witnesses (in depositions and trial) and for a high success rate in front of judges. After a few years, she was tapped to transition into patent law, due to her electrical engineering background. She became a registered patent attorney and began assisting clients with patent applications and infringement opinions. Almost immediately she began working with a cloud computing start-up to identify patentable aspects of its cutting-edge developments.
After five years at Fowler White, she was recruited to run the legal department of a publicly traded, high-tech, international corporation (Catalina Marketing Corporation, now privately held), where she loved working with a single client and focusing on company-wide complex legal strategies. Catalina invented a checkout coupon system involving networked servers, scanners, and printers in grocery stores to issue coupons based upon real time purchase behavior. It had a large portfolio of issued patents and applications, as well as a number of ongoing patent litigations when she took the helm.
At Catalina, she was responsible for all contracts, intellectual property, litigation, employment issues, shareholder disputes, state taxation issues, regulatory matters, and acquisitions. She worked with top DC patent law firms, as well as top firms in Europe and Asia, greatly expanding her capabilities and insight. She became experienced in patent infringement litigation, prosecution, trademark protection, state taxation litigation, employee disputes and resolution, post-acquisition earn-out disputes, contract negotiations, and getting a lot done with a very small staff. In this role, she served as the corporate representative in court, including serving as the company's 30(b)(6) witness.
After four years at Catalina, Stacy started a family and left her position to have more time for her daughters. She stayed on for some months as a contract attorney to help Catalina through the transition. Then, at the request of a former client from her Fowler White days, she began practicing as a sole practitioner for privately held businesses needing out-sourced general and intellectual property counsel. In this role, Stacy learned to apply complex legal strategies cost-effectively for companies ranging from start-ups to those with annual revenue in the $50,000,000 range. She handled numerous pre-suit patent disputes involving lighting, pro-audio and musical instrument cases and accessories, tools, and speakers. She was also hired to assist other law firms in the handling of patent litigation and licensing matters for much larger clients.
After ten years as a sole practitioner, and with her daughters well on their way, she was recruited by her current partner to expand back into litigation, and in 2014 they formed Matulis IP Law - now a top-tier IP legal strategies and litigation firm, handling a variety of intellectual property disputes. (See the Experience Matters page.)
Stacy was educated at Southern Illinois University, where she graduated with highest honors, earning a B.S. in electrical engineering. Prior to law school she worked on fighter jet control system redundancy optimization, and self-driving control systems for monorail technology.
She attended law school at Stetson University near St. Petersburg, Florida, where she lived with her husband. She excelled at moot court and gained invaluable experience interning with the legendary Middle District of Florida bankruptcy judge – Alexander L. Paskay. She credits assisting his clerk in the analysis of legal briefs on a myriad of legal issues as greatly accelerating her ability to quickly digest and decipher the strengths and weaknesses of legal arguments. She graduated law school with highest honors.
With her partner active in the bar, Stacy presents at IP symposiums and also participates in Working Women of Tampa Bay to share IP knowledge with local small businesses.
About Stacy