Impossible Foods Inc. v. Impossible X LLC
- Beth Freeman
- 5:21-cv-02419
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 8
In Impossible Foods Inc. v. Impossible X LLC, Judge Freeman granted one sealing motion and partly granted and partly denied another.
Impossible Foods Inc., Impossible LLC, Joel Runyon, defendants’ confidential business information, and third parties whose personally identifying information appeared in the filings.
What happened
In Impossible Foods Inc. v. Impossible X LLC, Impossible Foods asked to seal portions of its motion for partial summary judgment and attached exhibits, citing sensitive marketing and financial information. The defendants did not respond to that motion.
The court found compelling reasons to protect Impossible Foods’ confidential business information and granted that sealing motion. Impossible Foods also asked the court to consider sealing materials that defendants said contained their sensitive business information and third parties’ identifying information.
Judge Freeman granted the second motion in part and denied it in part. The denials were without prejudice, and the court set September 29, 2025, as the deadline for any renewed motions or declarations and for refiling public versions with narrower redactions.
The detailed version
- Impossible Foods Inc. v. Impossible X LLC · No. 5:21-cv-02419
- Beth Freeman
- Sept. 17, 2025
Background
The court considered two administrative motions filed by Impossible Foods:
1. ECF No. 260, seeking to file under seal portions of Impossible Foods’ motion for partial summary judgment and related exhibits. 2. ECF No. 261, asking the court to decide whether materials designated confidential by defendants should remain sealed.
Legal standard
The court explained that judicial records are generally open to public inspection. Because the materials were connected more than tangentially to the merits of the case, sealing required compelling reasons. The court also applied Civil Local Rule 79-5, which requires sealing requests to identify the interests supporting secrecy, the harm from disclosure, and why narrower protection would not be enough.
ECF No. 260
Impossible Foods said the materials contained financial data and marketing strategies whose disclosure could harm its competitive position. The defendants did not respond. The court found compelling reasons to seal confidential business information involving Impossible Foods’ marketing and financial decision-making and found the request narrowly tailored.
The court granted ECF No. 260. It granted sealing for identified portions of Impossible Foods’ motion for partial summary judgment, identified portions of Exhibit D to the declaration of R. Charles Henn Jr., and all of Exhibit Q to that declaration.
ECF No. 261
Defendants supported sealing materials they said contained valuable information about their business and financial decision-making, information that could affect their ability to form commercial relationships, and personally identifiable information of third parties. The court found compelling reasons to protect both competitively sensitive business information and the identified personal information. It also found the requested sealing narrowly tailored.
The court granted ECF No. 261 in part and denied it in part. It denied sealing for the identified portions of Impossible Foods’ motion for partial summary judgment because defendants did not request sealing of those portions. It granted sealing for specified portions of Exhibits B, G, H, I, M, N, O, and P to the Henn declaration, including business information and, where identified, third parties’ personal information. It denied sealing for the remaining portions of those exhibits because defendants did not request sealing. It denied sealing of Exhibits J and L because defendants did not request sealing.
Order and effect
The court ordered that all denials were without prejudice. Any renewed administrative motion or declaration had to be filed by September 29, 2025. The parties also had to file public versions of filings with narrower redactions where the court granted less sealing than the current public versions, unless they filed a renewed sealing motion for the document.
Read the full 8-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.