Salutica Allied Solutions Sdn Bhd v Apple South Asia Pte. Ltd.

Facts

Salutica Allied Solutions Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian maker of Bluetooth consumer electronics, owns a Singapore patent for storing device pairing information on a server so that it can be retrieved by substitute devices without re-pairing. In Originating Claim No 773 of 2024 it sued Apple South Asia Pte. Ltd. for infringement, and Apple counterclaimed for revocation. Apple rejected Salutica's requests for 34 categories of documents but offered to disclose technical documents on how its feature for connecting devices and accessories signed into the same Apple ID works, provided they were protected by a confidentiality regime.

When the parties could not agree terms, Apple applied in Summons No 3464 of 2025 for a confidentiality club. Most terms were later settled. Two remained in dispute: Apple's two-tier regime, under which the most sensitive Restricted Confidential Documents would be seen only by Salutica's external lawyers and expert, while General Confidential Documents could also be seen by Mr Joel Lim or Mr Joshua Lim; and a prosecution bar preventing Salutica's solicitors and expert from involvement in Bluetooth pairing patent work until six months after the suit ended. Salutica wanted Mr Joel Lim to see everything and opposed the bar.

Issues

1. Whether access to the most sensitive documents should be limited to the claimant's external solicitors and expert under a two-tier confidentiality regime
2. Whether a prosecution bar restraining the claimant's solicitors and expert from certain patent work should be imposed

Holding

The Assistant Registrar allowed the application in part, granting the confidentiality club on agreed terms with Apple's two-tier regime, so that Restricted Confidential Documents were limited to external eyes only and General Confidential Documents to the external team and either Mr Joel Lim or Mr Joshua Lim. The proposed prosecution bar was refused. Each party was ordered to bear its own costs.

Reasoning

Under O 11 r 9 of the Rules of Court 2021, confidentiality does not bar disclosure but is not lost by it, and the Riddick principle limits collateral use. In intellectual property cases the court balances the receiving party's interest in full access against the disclosing party's interest in protecting secrets, following Warner-Lambert, Roussel and the principles collected in OnePlus. An external-eyes-only tier is exceptional, but staged disclosure beginning on that basis is permissible.

The Assistant Registrar rejected the suggestion that slides and internal collaboration documents were unlikely to be technical, and gave little weight to the argument that the information was public, as Salutica's own deponent did not say the online articles or the Malaysian expert reports revealed how the feature works. Several factors made this an exceptional case. The documents concerned a secret process, at the high end of confidentiality, and leakage raised real security risks for Apple and its users. Salutica made Bluetooth headsets and smart watches, so it could exploit the information, and as an overseas business-to-business manufacturer any misuse would be hard to police. The two executives had a strong stake in the suit and controlled the business, and what they learned could not be unlearned. They would still see the general tier, Apple bore the onus of justifying its designations, Salutica could challenge them, and the case was at an early stage, so the external team could advise on infringement without revealing the secrets.

On the prosecution bar, restrictions beyond what is needed to protect confidentiality require careful justification. The bar was overly broad, extending beyond the iCloud-based process in issue, Magnesium Elektron involved a restriction the parties had agreed in principle, and Apple's own point that the solicitors and expert did no patent prosecution work undercut the need for it.

From the judgment