UK court rules in Intel's favor in R2 Semi power patent case

Legal woes are still ongoing in Italy, France, and Germany

The High Court of England and Wales has sided with Intel in a multinational patent dispute brought by R2 Semiconductor alleging the x86 giant infringed on its voltage regulation tech.

California-based chip designer R2 brought the case in late 2023, seeking an injunction barring the sale of certain Intel chips which it claimed [PDF] violated corporate patents. R2 has brought similar cases in numerous other jurisdictions including Germany, France, and Italy.

The patent in question related to on-chip voltage regulators integrated into Intel's chips, designed to protect the silicon from degradation or failure in the case of over voltage.

R2 alleged that Intel had violated its patents by integrating this technology into the majority of its processors. Intel, meanwhile, argued that R2's patents are invalid.

In a judgment released on Wednesday, the court agreed that R2's patents were indeed invalid as they lacked the necessary "inventive step over Sun."

In this case Sun refers to Jian Sun, one of the authors of a paper titled "3D Power Delivery for Microprocessors and High-Performance ASICs" published in 2007 by a team at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York.

However, it's worth noting that the judge also determined that Intel's products would have violated the patents – had they been valid.

Intel declined to comment. The Register also reached out to R2, but had not heard back at the time of publication.

While the UK court ruled in Intel's favor, the same can't be said of the German courts. Back in February, the Düsseldorf Regional Court found that Intel had infringed on R2's patent, and granted an injunction barring the sale of chips containing the offending tech. That case, unsurprisingly, is under appeal.

Meanwhile, over the past few months R2 has pushed ahead with litigation in other markets. In March, R2 extended its legal fight to Intel's Italian subsidiaries and in April lodged a similar lawsuit in France.

R2 isn't just targeting Intel. It's also going after Intel partners – including OEMs such as HPE, Dell, and Fujitsu as well as cloud provider Amazon Web Services – for using Intel's parts. ®