In Re Mosaic LLM Litigation

Background

The court resolved the parties’ joint discovery letter concerning whether Dr. Ali Ghodsi, Databricks’ CEO, could be designated as a document custodian. The parties’ electronic-discovery protocol allowed Plaintiffs to select three additional custodians after Defendants selected the first ten, subject to objections based only on “Apex considerations.”

Plaintiffs argued that Ghodsi was uniquely positioned to have relevant information because of his leadership role and involvement in Databricks’ acquisition of MosaicML. Plaintiffs relied in part on an interview in which Ghodsi discussed meeting MosaicML’s CEO, deciding to pursue the acquisition, and the value of MosaicML’s generative artificial-intelligence models.

Court’s Analysis

The court explained that the apex doctrine recognizes the burden that discovery involving high-level corporate executives can impose. In this dispute, the court considered the executive’s access to relevant information, whether the information was unique, and the burden of producing the information.

The court found it credible that Ghodsi would have documents about Databricks’ acquisition of MosaicML. Those documents could be relevant to Databricks’ knowledge of Mosaic’s alleged infringing activity and to the financial benefit Databricks believed it could obtain from that activity. The court also found it highly plausible, though somewhat more speculative, that Ghodsi had information about Databricks’ and MosaicML’s post-acquisition relationship.

The court rejected Defendants’ argument that Ghodsi should not be designated because his documents might overlap with documents held by other custodians, including former MosaicML CEO Dr. Rao. It noted that Ghodsi’s leadership role differed from that of most other agreed-upon custodians, who were members or directors of MosaicML’s research and engineering teams. Ghodsi might have unique information about strategic-level large-language-model development and commercialization, including communications with Databricks’ board and investors.

Defendants did not argue that producing Ghodsi’s custodial file would be unduly burdensome. Because the parties had agreed to identify up to thirteen custodians, and no unique burden was shown, the court found no reason to exclude Ghodsi on burden grounds.

Disposition

Magistrate Judge Liga M. Cisneros granted Plaintiffs’ request to designate Ghodsi as a document custodian. This was a discovery ruling and did not resolve the parties’ underlying claims, including the alleged infringement claims.