In Orlando Health, Inc. v. HKS Architects, Inc., 2024 WL 4025379 (M.D. Fl. Sept. 3, 2024), the court denied an unopposed motion to enter a protective order and an unopposed motion to enter an ESI Protocol....more
Though litigants routinely enter into stipulated protective orders in the course of discovery that may involve sensitive company information (or even trade secrets), a recent ruling is a cautionary tale on the potential...more
A battle is heating up in the Jan. 6 criminal case against former President Donald Trump that, while seemingly technical, will likely have a significant impact on the defendant’s ability to mount a defense. It may well serve...more
An important word has been missing from much of the talk about Alex Jones: Ediscovery. But ediscovery is where it all went wrong in the fiasco of his case. In a bizarre twist of events that are even “too dumb” for a Law...more
In a 2-1 opinion,1 the Federal Circuit recently reversed a decision from the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin finding Defendant Leader Accessories LLC (“Leader”) and its attorney, Mr....more
Precedential Federal Circuit Opinions - STATIC MEDIA LLC v. LEADER ACCESSORIES LLC [OPINION] (2021-2303, 6/28/22) (Dyk, Reyna, Taranto) - Dyk, J. Reversing district court’s contempt finding and award of sanctions and...more
Last week’s big news was the anticlimactic end of the American Axle saga. But the Federal Circuit was hard at work too: it issued a dozen decisions on a wide variety of subjects. Below we provide our usual weekly...more
Trade secret litigation presents a variety of procedural and practical complexities at every stage of the proceeding. One of the most important—yet often overlooked—issues in these cases can be summarized by the following...more
Federal litigators aren’t taking sufficient advantage of 2008 amendments to Federal Rule of Evidence 502, which gives them the authority to obtain protective orders that can stem the damage from inadvertent disclosure of...more
After an initial denial, the PTAB recently granted Unified Patents’ motions for entry of protective order and for seal in Unified Patents, LLC v. Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, IPR2020-01048, Paper 33...more
The District of New Jersey recently amended its local civil rules relating to sealing procedures and confidentiality orders, which are more commonly referred to as protective orders in other jurisdictions. Specifically,...more
Oftentimes bid protests contain the protester’s highly sensitive and confidential company information, the release of which would cause competitive harm to the protester....more
On December 7, 2020, United States District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff (S.D.N.Y.) denied Plaintiff SIMO Holdings Inc.’s (“SIMO”) motion to use four confidential documents in a related trade secret dispute pending in Shenzhen,...more
Discovery in patent cases often requires parties to produce confidential technical, business, and financial information. To safeguard this sensitive information, courts issue protective orders limiting who can access it,...more
Where parties seek to keep certain documents they have filed under seal and out of the public eye, the Business Court now requires proof that disclosing the information would harm the parties or others before it will agree to...more
Update: On September 24, 2021, the Federal Court of Appeal allowed the Minister’s appeal of this decision and remitted the matter to the Federal Court for redetermination of several issues: Canada (Health) v Elanco Canada...more
On February 17, 2020, the Federal Court of Appeal reaffirmed the long-established practice of granting protective orders to parties involved in intellectual property litigation before the Federal Court in Canada. In doing so,...more
Discovery is limited in inter partes review proceedings. As we previously discussed, discovery is available only “in the interest of justice,” and requests for discovery frequently are denied. Yet, a party may be aware of...more
Last week, multinational mining giant Rio Tinto asked a federal court in Manhattan to shield its document disclosures to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from the public eye....more
Trade secrets derive their commercial value from being secret. When trade secrets are misappropriated, litigation may be necessary to stop a competitor from exploiting them in the marketplace. Yet litigating...more
The law firm that inadvertently produced records containing personally-identifying information (“PII”) relating to 50,000 Wells Fargo customers in response to a third-party subpoena, which we first reported on, went before a...more
Fallon, M.J. Court resolves protective order dispute. The dispute centers on what information may be disclosed to foreign counsel in non-US counterpart litigation. The magistrate previously asked the parties to be...more
Earlier this month, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that a party in litigation seeking to prevent responsive discoverable information from disclosure under a protective order must first demonstrate that the information in...more
In a growing number of courts, a negotiated protective order entered for discovery purposes will not protect litigants’ confidential information from public disclosure. Stipulated protective orders are commonly used...more
The scenario is pretty common. A company is served with a subpoena duces tecum in a lawsuit to which it isn’t a party. Among the categories of documents requested are some that clearly include information the non-party...more