X One, Inc. v. Uber Technologies, Inc.
- Lucy Koh
- 5:16-cv-06050
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 9
In X One v. Uber, Judge Koh ruled on sealing requests, keeping some materials secret, allowing some requests, and rejecting others.
X One, Inc. and Uber Technologies, Inc.; the order determines which portions of their court filings remain sealed or must be publicly accessible.
What happened
In X One, Inc. v. Uber Technologies, Inc., the court considered requests to keep parts of court filings confidential. The requests accompanied motions to strike, expert-evidence motions, and summary-judgment motions in a patent dispute.
The court said court records are generally open to the public. It allowed secrecy when the parties showed strong reasons, such as protecting confidential business information, licensing information, or technical information.
Judge Koh granted the sealing requests connected to motions the court had denied as moot. She granted Uber’s request related to its summary-judgment motion, granted X One’s request in part and denied it with prejudice in part, and denied Uber’s reply-related request with prejudice.
The detailed version
- X One, Inc. v. Uber Technologies, Inc. · No. 5:16-cv-06050
- Lucy Koh
- Feb. 12, 2020
Background
The court addressed multiple motions to seal documents filed in connection with motions to strike, motions to exclude expert evidence, and motions for summary judgment. The court had previously granted Uber summary judgment on noninfringement and had denied the parties’ motions to strike, the expert-evidence motions, and X One’s motion for summary judgment on validity as moot. Because those motions were not decided, the court granted the related sealing motions at ECF Nos. 249, 257, 260, 268, 271, 291, 293, 296, 300, 314, 318, 320, 332, and 334. Documents provisionally filed under seal at those docket entries were to remain under seal.
Legal standard
The court explained that judicial records generally carry a strong presumption of public access. For records more than tangentially related to the merits of a case, a party must show compelling reasons that outweigh the public’s interest in access. Records less closely related to the merits may be sealed under the less demanding good-cause standard in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c).
Rulings
The court granted Uber’s motion to seal at ECF No. 298. It found compelling reasons to protect limited information about the technical operation of Uber’s products and the identities of Uber’s licensors under confidential license agreements.
The court granted in part and denied with prejudice in part X One’s motion to seal at ECF No. 322. It granted sealing for specified financial and business information, including pricing and business strategies; confidential licensing information; and specified technical information. The court denied with prejudice the portions of X One’s exhibits that Uber did not seek to seal. The court also denied with prejudice Uber’s request to seal references to the “session ID” identifier in X One’s opposition brief. It found Uber’s assertions of possible competitive or data-security harm too general and unsupported, while the session-ID discussion was important to the parties’ noninfringement arguments and the court’s analysis.
Finally, the court denied with prejudice Uber’s motion to seal its reply at ECF No. 337 because it sought to seal the same session-ID references and offered the same insufficient justification. The conclusion stated that ECF No. 298 was granted; ECF No. 322 was granted in part and denied with prejudice in part; and ECF No. 337 was denied with prejudice.
Read the full 9-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.