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N.D. Cal.Procedural orderFiled Sept. 25, 2025

Access Optical Networks, Inc. v. Seagate Technology LLC

Judge
Virginia Demarchi
Docket
5:24-cv-03745
Court
U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
Pages
6
DiscoveryCivil ProcedureIntellectual Property
In one sentence

In Access Optical Networks v. Seagate Technology, Judge DeMarchi ordered AON to supplement three discovery responses but not a fourth.

Who this affects

Access Optical Networks, Inc. must amend or supplement its responses to Seagate Technology LLC’s Interrogatories Nos. 1, 2, and 12 by October 1, 2025. The court did not require a supplemental response to Interrogatory No. 4 at that time.

What happened

Access Optical Networks, Inc. v. Seagate Technology LLC concerns Seagate’s requests for information about AON’s alleged trade secrets and their disclosure.

The court ordered AON to amend or supplement its answers to Interrogatories Nos. 1, 2, and 12 by October 1, 2025. It did not require AON to amend or supplement its answer to Interrogatory No. 4 at that time.

Judge Virginia K. DeMarchi ruled that AON had enough information to answer Nos. 1, 2, and 12 more fully, while No. 4 could wait until Seagate made more substantial document and information disclosures.

The detailed version

For law students, journalists, and other readers who want the full reasoning

Case
Access Optical Networks, Inc. v. Seagate Technology LLC · No. 5:24-cv-03745
Judge
Virginia Demarchi
Date
Sept. 25, 2025

Background

Access Optical Networks, Inc. (AON) alleges that it owns trade-secret information concerning holographic data storage technology. It says that it shared trade secrets and confidential information with Seagate Technology LLC between 2012 and 2015 under nondisclosure agreements, and that Seagate used the information to speed development of its own technology. AON asserts claims for trade-secret misappropriation under California law, trade-secret misappropriation under federal law, and breach of contract.

AON identified as many as 76 alleged trade secrets. Seagate served interrogatories seeking information about disclosures of those alleged trade secrets to Seagate and third parties, AON’s misappropriation contentions, and patent documents that AON says disclose, incorporate, or derive from its alleged trade secrets. AON answered the interrogatories, but the parties disagreed about whether its answers were sufficient.

Court’s analysis

The court addressed each interrogatory separately.

Interrogatory No. 1

The court found that AON’s answer did not identify the disclosure circumstances separately for each alleged trade secret. Because the requested information was within AON’s possession, custody, or control, AON could not wait for Seagate’s discovery before answering fully. The court ordered AON to provide an amended or supplemental response.

Interrogatory No. 2

AON gave a qualified answer and identified ten third parties to whom it might have disclosed alleged trade secrets, but it did not say whether disclosures actually occurred or identify which trade secrets were disclosed to which third parties, when, or under what circumstances. The court found the answer insufficient and ordered AON to provide an amended or supplemental response.

Interrogatory No. 4

The court treated this as a contention interrogatory, meaning a request for the factual basis of a party’s legal position. The court concluded that AON did not have to provide a more detailed answer at this stage because the response could not be completed solely from information in AON’s possession. After Seagate makes a more substantial production of responsive documents and information, AON will need to supplement its response, but the court did not require that supplementation now.

Interrogatory No. 12

AON’s answer largely copied allegations from its second amended complaint rather than identifying, for each alleged trade secret, the specific portions of Seagate’s patent documents that reflected it. The court found that AON already had the information needed to answer more specifically and was not persuaded that a trade-secret-specific response would impose a substantial burden or require expert-level analysis. The court ordered AON to provide an amended or supplemental response.

Disposition

Judge Virginia K. DeMarchi ordered AON to amend or supplement its responses to Interrogatories Nos. 1, 2, and 12 by October 1, 2025. The court did not require AON to amend or supplement its response to Interrogatory No. 4 at that time.

The authoritative version

Read the full 6-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.

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