Samsung Electronics hired Cho Jun-hyung, a lawyer that defended the group in the independent counsel case over Samsung, as the flagship unit’s executive vice president earlier this month.

Samsung Electronics confirmed Cho was employed to assist the company’s vice chairman Choi Gee-sung, according to a Samsung official. However, the official said Cho’s exact role at the company was undetermined at this point, although news reports said that he is to guide the group’s electronics arm on patent rights issues.

The hiring took place on May 1, shortly after the world’s second-largest cellphone maker filed countersuits against Apple Inc. over patent rights in courts located in Korea, Japan and Germany.

Samsung said Apple’s iPhone and iPad violated 10 of the company’s patents. It submitted a complaint with the Seoul Central District Court late last month over the alleged infringement of five patents that focused on communications technologies. It also filed a suit with a court in Tokyo, Japan, over two patent infringements and another in Mannheim, Germany, for three patent violations.

Cho, a graduate of Dong-A University in Busan, served as a prosecutor from 1990-2002 and moved on to become a lawyer at Kim and Chang, a major law firm here. Since then, he took over large-scale cases that involved popular chaebol figures including now-deceased Chung Mong-hun of Hyundai, Kim Woo-jung of the former Daewoo Group and Hanwha’s Chairman Kim Seung-youn, as well as Samsung’s Lee Kun-hee.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)