R2 Semiconductor Inc. v Intel Corporation (UK) Ltd & Anor

In an expedited patent infringement claim, the court may require a party responding to a Notice of Experiments to address the accuracy of a litigation model where that model materially supports pleaded infringement issues. The model need not itself prove its accuracy, and the notice may be non-standard, provided it is directed to relevant factual issues. Admissions of some effect do not necessarily resolve whether the effect reaches the degree relied upon at trial. Case-management discretion should balance additional work against the need to identify disputes early and avoid evidence being served too close to trial. Any admissions should be confined to the specific pleaded integers for which the model is relied upon.

R2 Semiconductor claimed that Intel’s fully integrated voltage regulators infringed its patent concerning on-chip voltage-spike protection circuitry. Intel counterclaimed for revocation. The proceedings were listed for an expedited trial, and Intel supplied a Product and Process Description containing models and simulation material.

R2 served a Notice of Experiments concerning its reverse-engineered R2 Model. It sought admissions that the model accurately represented the representative products for specified infringement issues, or particulars explaining any alleged inaccuracy. Intel objected that the notice sought admissions on non-pleaded or legal matters and that existing admissions made the application unnecessary.

1. Application granted. The court ordered a version of R2’s proposed order, subject to safeguards limiting the use of admissions to the specific integers in the Statement of Case on Infringement that relied on the R2 Model.
2. Intel had complied with the requirement to provide the information it possessed in its Product and Process Description. The requirement for particulars sufficient to resolve infringement issues did not require Intel to create new information or simulations beyond material already held in the ordinary course of business. Practice Direction 63 treated a Product and Process Description as an alternative to ordinary disclosure.
3. Intel’s admission that input decoupling capacitors could reduce the magnitude and number of voltage-spike oscillations did not resolve the extent of that reduction. Depending on claim construction, R2 might still need to establish that the reduction reached the required threshold, and that issue depended on the accuracy of the R2 Model.
4. A Notice of Experiments is directed to specific and relevant facts, as explained in EMGS v Petroleum Goe-Services [2016] FSR 25. The requests concerning the accuracy of the R2 Model were non-standard because the experiments could not themselves prove accuracy. That did not prevent the court from granting appropriate case-management relief in this unusual case.
5. The court rejected the technical objections. The overriding objective favoured early identification of any genuine disagreement about the model. It was unnecessary to require R2 to plead its construction case on the degree of voltage-spike reduction at that stage; that remained a matter for the trial judge.