Federal Circuit refuses to seal documents in blow for Uniloc

A panel of US federal judges has denied patent owner  Uniloc’s request to seal documents in its infringement suit against Apple.

The  ruling, issued last week by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, follows an intervention by the  Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Uniloc filed requests to seal Apple’s motion to dismiss the suit and other documents filed by both parties at the US District Court for the Northern District of California.

Uniloc justified the move on the grounds that the documents contained confidential information. But EFF contacted counsel for Uniloc in November 2018, arguing that its proposed redactions were “excessive”.

According to EFF, Uniloc’s redactions were not “consistent with the public’s right of access” to court documents.

But Uniloc declined to revise its proposals, and EFF filed a motion to intervene for the purpose of opposing the sealing motions.

The district court ruled against Uniloc, and in January 2019 denied in full its motion to seal the documents.

In the decision, the district court ruled that Uniloc’s request to seal covered an “astonishing” amount of material, including the “majority of exhibits and large swaths of briefing and declarations”.

Uniloc returned to the court with a modified, narrower proposed set of redactions. In the revised motion to seal, Uniloc asked the court to redact materials relating to a software platform, its relationship with a creditor, financial information, and details of licensing agreements with third-parties.

But this too was rejected. According to the district court, Uniloc should have submitted the narrower proposal “right from the outset rather than over-classifying and then trying to get away with whatever [it could] on a motion to reconsider”.

In last week’s ruling, the Federal Circuit mostly upheld the district court’s conclusions. The Federal Circuit panel wrote that Uniloc’s revised motion: “identified no intervening change in the law and failed to show that, at the time of its original sealing request, it did not know, or in the exercise of reasonable diligence could not have discovered, any of the facts that it relied upon in support of its motion.”

The Federal Circuit judgment added: “In denying Uniloc’s sweeping motion to seal, the district court sent a strong message that litigants should submit narrow, well-supported sealing requests in the first, thereby obviating the need for judicial intervention.”

But the appeals court did overturn one part of the district court’s decision, relating to Uniloc’s third-party licensing agreements. Uniloc’s revised motion to seal included a request to seal a table showing the licensing agreements the company entered into with third parties from 2010 to mid 2017.

The Federal Circuit instructed the district court to revisit the issue.

“As to these third-party materials, we conclude that the district court failed to make findings sufficient to allow us to adequately assess whether it properly balanced the public’s right of access against the interests of the third parties in shielding their financial and licensing information from public view,” the Federal Circuit decision said.

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