United States v. Adobe, Inc.

Background

The United States sued Adobe, Inc., Maninder Sawhney, and David Wadhwani under the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act. It alleges that the defendants enrolled consumers in Adobe subscription plans without adequately disclosing the plan terms and used difficult cancellation procedures to keep consumers in subscriptions they no longer wanted.

This order resolved the United States’ administrative motion concerning whether material in the complaint should be sealed because the defendants had designated it confidential. The defendants clarified that they sought to seal only one sentence in the complaint. They also sought to seal the individual defendants’ home addresses appearing in certificates of service. The United States opposed sealing any part of the complaint but did not oppose sealing the home addresses.

Legal standards

Court filings generally are available for public inspection. A filing that is more than merely connected to the case’s merits may be sealed only for “compelling reasons.” A filing only tangentially related to the merits may be sealed for “good cause,” a lower standard. When one party seeks sealing based on another party’s confidentiality designation, the party that designated the material confidential must provide adequate reasons for sealing.

Complaint material

The court applied the compelling-reasons standard to the requested redaction in the complaint because the complaint is closely related to the merits. The sentence identified the primary source of Adobe’s subscription revenues. The defendants relied on decisions allowing sealing of confidential and sensitive business information, but their supporting declaration stated only that Adobe kept the financial information confidential and that disclosure could allow competitors to change their business strategies.

The court found those statements too general to satisfy the compelling-reasons standard. It also found that the sentence did not contain the specific profit, cost, pricing, trade-secret, product-specific, or other detailed information that had supported sealing in the cases cited by the defendants. The court therefore DENIED the defendants’ request to seal material in the complaint and ordered the United States to file an unredacted copy of the complaint on the public docket as soon as practicable.

Home addresses

The court applied the good-cause standard to the home addresses because certificates of service are only tangentially related to the merits. The parties agreed that the addresses should be sealed, and the court agreed. The United States had already filed replacement versions of the documents that omitted the addresses.

The court GRANTED the defendants’ request to seal documents containing the individual defendants’ home addresses—ECF 1, 2, 7, and 9–11. The order states that those documents are sealed and identifies ECF 31–36 as the replacement filings without the home addresses.

Disposition

The request to seal material in the complaint was DENIED. The request to seal documents containing the individual defendants’ home addresses was GRANTED. The order also terminated ECF 33.