Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Chung

Background

Cisco sued defendants for allegedly misappropriating its trade secrets. Plantronics Inc. and Thomas Puorro moved to strike portions of Cisco’s trade-secret identification and challenged whether the disclosure met California Code of Civil Procedure section 2019.210. James He joined those motions. Plantronics also moved for a protective order concerning discovery requests Cisco had served. Cisco separately requested permission to seal portions of its trade-secret disclosure, the parties’ briefing on the motion to strike, and related exhibits.

Cisco had served a first amended trade-secret identification in August 2020. The disclosure covered information concerning several projects, including Sunkist, Polaris, Vecchio, the EA Document, Rialto, and business information. The motion to strike argued that 23 designated trade secrets fell outside the scope of the court’s earlier orders and that other designations lacked reasonable particularity. Cisco argued that the motion was premature because the parties had not adequately met and conferred, that the procedure was improper, and that the disclosure was sufficient.

Motion to Strike

The court held that the California section 2019.210 disclosure was not a mandatory disclosure under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, so the local meet-and-confer requirement did not make the motion premature. The court also held that it could use a motion to strike to address an allegedly overbroad disclosure and enforce its prior orders.

For information attributed to He, the court’s earlier order had limited the actionable information to design documents and hardware diagrams for Cisco’s headset prototypes. The court found that seven He-related designations could fall within that earlier ruling and denied the motion to strike them. The court held that internal revenue targets and certain Sunkist marketing information fell outside the earlier ruling and struck the specified disclosure portions.

For information attributed to Chung, the court’s earlier order had identified four potentially actionable categories: design specifications and schematics for a pre-release video-conferencing prototype; design specifications and schematics for sound-bar products; the EA Document; and information about emerging business opportunities in the collaboration space. The court found that seven Chung-related designations could fall within that ruling and denied the motion to strike them. It found that seven other designations—including specified portfolio, strategy, pricing, cost-model, and early-commit information—fell outside the earlier ruling and struck the identified portions.

The court also addressed reasonable particularity, meaning whether the disclosure identified the alleged trade secrets in enough detail to let defendants investigate the claims and let the court manage discovery. Cisco clarified that Chung’s alleged misappropriation of Sunkist information was limited to information in the EA Document. Cisco also agreed to withdraw the He business-information designation. The court ordered Cisco to make those clarifications and held that Cisco did not need, at that stage, to identify which particular business information was misappropriated by Williams and which was misappropriated by Puorro.

The court denied requests to strike information concerning Project X, Project Liberator, limited restructurings, other specified business information, and Project Rialto. It explained that the objections largely challenged whether the information was actually a trade secret, rather than whether Cisco had described it with reasonable particularity. The court ordered Cisco to remove all stricken or withdrawn designations, make the required clarifications, and serve a third-amended disclosure. Cisco could not amend it again without the court’s permission or the defendants’ consent.

Motions to Seal

The court applied the “compelling reasons” standard because the sealing requests concerned materials more than tangentially related to the merits of the case. It found compelling reasons to seal portions of the disclosure that described trade-secret information remaining at issue, but denied sealing for the nine categories of information the court had struck because Cisco did not establish a specific, non-speculative risk of competitive harm from disclosure.

The court partly granted and partly denied the requests concerning Plantronics’ opening brief and Cisco’s opposition and related exhibits. It granted sealing for specified references to information that remained within the trade-secret disclosure and denied sealing for specified references to stricken information. It terminated as moot Cisco’s request concerning several exhibits that the court did not need to consider; those materials were to remain restricted. For the Sunkist Business Commit presentation, the court denied sealing for slides containing stricken information, granted sealing for specified slides containing design-related information, and denied sealing for the remaining slides. The court denied the motion to seal docket entry 154 in its entirety because Cisco had not filed the required supporting declaration. The court also partly granted and partly denied the request concerning Plantronics’ reply, including denying sealing for the Sunkist revenue-target information.

Protective Order and Disposition

The court denied Plantronics’ motion for a protective order without prejudice. It stated that some issues were moot after the rulings on the disclosure and that the parties had not meaningfully met and conferred before Plantronics filed the motion. The parties were required to speak orally, by telephone or video conference, before filing another discovery motion and could submit a joint letter if they remained unable to resolve the dispute.

In the final disposition, Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton granted in part and denied in part Plantronics’ motion to strike, denied Plantronics’ motion for a protective order without prejudice, and granted in part and denied in part Cisco’s requests to seal. The court required the parties to prepare and publicly file specified redacted and unredacted materials within the stated deadlines.