Sumotext Corp. -v- Zoove, Inc.

Background

The court considered administrative motions asking to file parts of the case record under seal. One group concerned exhibits supporting or opposing the defendants’ motion for summary judgment. The other concerned Sumotext’s motions challenging opinions from defense experts Greg J. Regan and Debra Aron, Ph.D.

Because the filings were related to the merits of the case, the court applied the “compelling reasons” standard. Under that standard, a party must provide specific reasons why disclosure would cause harm, and the request must be limited to only the material that genuinely requires protection. A confidentiality designation or protective order alone was not enough.

Rulings on Summary-Judgment Materials

The court granted the defendants’ motion to seal seven of the 44 exhibits submitted with their summary-judgment motion. It granted sealing for the entire document or highlighted portions of those exhibits, as specified in the order, because they contained confidential customer contracts, pricing information, referral agreements, business information, or other commercially sensitive material.

Sumotext also moved to seal portions of its opposition and supporting exhibits based on confidentiality designations by the defendants and former defendant Mblox. Mblox did not respond and therefore did not establish that its designated documents were sealable. The defendants filed a narrower sealing request in response, and the court found that request supported by compelling reasons. The sealing motions concerning the summary-judgment briefing were granted as to the redactions requested by the defendants and otherwise denied.

Rulings on Expert-Witness Materials

The court addressed only the second set of sealing motions concerning Sumotext’s challenges to the opinions of Regan and Aron, but extended its rulings to duplicate documents filed with the first set of motions. The court denied requests to seal the two motions challenging the experts’ opinions, the Goedde expert reply report, and the Regan deposition excerpts because the defendants did not seek sealing for those materials.

The court granted sealing for specified portions of exhibits to the Regan and Aron motions. The protected material included proprietary pricing, revenues, losses, customer identities, customer fees and cancellation rates, commercial agreements, carrier relationships, business prospects, and other information that the defendants showed could cause competitive harm if disclosed. The court’s ruling applied to all copies of the covered documents filed under different electronic filing numbers.

Disposition

Judge Beth Labson Freeman ordered that the parties’ administrative motions to file under seal were GRANTED IN PART AND DENIED IN PART as set out in the order. The order disposed of ECF Nos. 337, 339, 340, 342, 346, 347, 349, 355, and 356. It did not rule on the merits of the summary-judgment motion or the expert-witness challenges.