SCOTUS rules on FOIA requests; grants PTAB time bar review
The government can withhold private secrets from freedom of information requests, even if disclosing them wouldn’t cause competitive harm, the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has ruled.
In a decision yesterday, June 24, in the case Food Marketing Institute v Argus Leader Media, DBA Argus Leader, the court limited public and media access to government records.
The case dates to 2011, when South Dakota-based newspaper, Argus Leader, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for data collected by the US Department of Agriculture.
In its ruling, SCOTUS decided that “confidential information”, as defined in the Freedom of Information Act, means anything intended to be kept secret, rather than only information that would cause competitive harm if made public.
The US government had asked SCOTUS to adopt the broader definition, while the newspaper argued the court should adopt a narrower definition, which would mean confidentiality would apply to fewer FOIA requests.
Time-barred inter partes reviews
It was also announced yesterday, June 24, that SCOTUS has granted a petition for writ of certiorari in Dex Media Inc v Click-To-Call Technologies.
SCOTUS said it will decide whether the Federal Circuit has jurisdiction to review decisions by the US Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) on the timeliness of patent challenges.
The case relates to a statute of US law, which holds that an inter partes review may not be instituted if “the petition requesting the proceeding is filed more than one year after the date on which the petitioner, real party in interest, or privy of the petitioner is served with a complaint alleging infringement of the patent.”
Digital marketing company Dex Media, DexYP filed the petition in January after the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a decision by the PTAB, which had found that an inter partes review of a ‘click-to-call’ patent was not time-barred.
It asked the court to decide whether US law bars institution of an inter partes review when the previously served patent infringement complaint, filed more than one year before the inter partes review petition, had been dismissed without prejudice.
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