Amy E. Proctor 

Amy E. Proctor is an Irell & Manella LLP partner who advises clients on complex IP issues. She’s been with the firm since 2012 after obtaining her JD from USC Gould School of Law and a bachelor’s degree in physics, cum laude, from the University of Florida.

Last year, she was selected as one of The Daily Journal’s Top Forty Under 40 attorneys.

Also, last year, two mega-wins reaped valuable funds that will fuel further research by the company that licensed its patents to client VSLI Technology LLC. “More generally, the success of these cases will go to help companies to invest in technology and promote innovation,” Proctor said.

Her science background has helped her and her colleagues obtain hundreds of millions of dollars for patent owners. Proctor has proven expertise in assessing patent infringement damages. In April 2022, she was a principal member of the team that obtained a $2.3 billion final judgment for VLSI in a two-patent suit against Intel Corp. — the largest patent judgment in U.S. history. VLSI Technology v. Intel Corp., 6:21-cv-00057 (W.D. Tex., filed April 11, 2019).

In November 2022, Proctor co-led the team that obtained a $948 million jury verdict — later to be increased by interest payments and supplemental damages — for VLSI in another challenge to Intel over patents that provides improved performance and scalability in server microprocessors.

Proctor led the development and presentation of VLSI’s damages case involving technical and economic evidence, and she examined VLSI’s primary damages expert at trial. VLSI Technology v. Intel Corp., 1:19-cv-00977 (W.D. Tex., filed April 11, 2019).

The $2.3 billion win gained the Irell & Manella trial team a 2023 Daily Journal CLAY Award. And it came under extreme weather conditions in Texas, where a destructive ice storm and power failure forced Proctor, co-lead attorney Morgan Chu and others to dine on hot dog buns and a few cans of baked beans Proctor had with her.

Despite the privation, Proctor said she and colleagues were able to present evidence they’d devised as the result of some “custom testing of the patented invention’s value,” which they “then quantified that in dollars.”

“We ended up building a custom model based on millions and millions of data points” that correlated chip features with chip prices across many Intel products,” Proctor said.

She used a similar approach in the second trial with fresh testing for the different patents asserted. “That’s one of the fun things about it,” she said. “For each individual patent, we get to dig in and figure out what makes that specific invention valuable and let that drive the damages strategy.”

— John Roemer