Brown v. Google LLC
- Yvonne Rogers
- 4:20-cv-03664
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
In Brown v. Google LLC, Magistrate Judge Van Keulen granted four motions to seal limited portions of discovery materials containing confidential information and personal identifiers.
Google, the plaintiffs, and members of the public seeking access to the identified court materials.
What happened
Brown v. Google LLC involved requests to keep certain materials from discovery-related disputes under seal. The court applied the lower “good cause” standard because the materials were submitted with discovery motions rather than motions closely tied to the case’s underlying claims.
The court granted the requests as to specified redacted portions of plaintiffs’ demonstratives, two hearing transcripts, a November 12, 2021 order, and an exhibit to that order. The court found that the redactions narrowly protected Google’s confidential technical information, internal systems, projects, identifiers, operations, and practices involving Incognito, as well as plaintiffs’ personally identifiable information.
Magistrate Judge Susan Van Keulen issued the November 23, 2021 order. The order did not decide the underlying claims; it ruled on access to specified court materials.
The detailed version
- Brown v. Google LLC · No. 4:20-cv-03664
- Yvonne Rogers
- Nov. 23, 2021
Background
The court considered administrative motions to file under seal materials connected with discovery disputes. Court records generally carry a strong presumption of public access. Under the standards described in the order, materials related more than tangentially to the merits require compelling reasons for sealing, while materials unrelated or only tangentially related to the merits may be sealed on a showing of good cause under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c). Parties must also follow Civil Local Rule 79-5.
The court held that the good-cause standard applied because the materials were submitted in connection with discovery-related motions.
Rulings
The court ordered the following:
- Docket 321: The court granted the motion as to redacted portions of plaintiffs’ demonstratives, including pages 3–6, 11–14, 16, 18–19, 26, 28–33, and 42–51. The court noted that it had previously denied the motion to seal without prejudice and had given Google until November 19, 2021, to submit the declaration required by Civil Local Rule 79-5. Google submitted that declaration by the deadline. The court found the requested redactions narrowly tailored to protect Google’s confidential and proprietary information about sensitive features of its internal systems and operations, including project names, cookies, internal identifiers, and internal communications and practices concerning Incognito and its proprietary functions.
- Docket 333: The court granted the motion as to specified redacted portions of the September 30, 2021 hearing transcript, including pages and lines identified in the order. The court found that the redactions protected confidential technical information about Google’s internal systems and proprietary functions, as well as plaintiffs’ personally identifiable information.
- Docket 339: The court granted the motion as to specified redacted portions of the November 12, 2021 order and paragraphs 3.1–3.7 of Exhibit 1 to that order. The court found that the redactions protected confidential and proprietary information about Google’s internal identifiers, systems, projects, data structures, operations, and particular internal data sources that Google had been ordered to search for information relating to plaintiffs.
- Docket 340: The court granted the motion as to the specified redacted portions of the November 4, 2021 hearing transcript. The order described the information as confidential technical information about Google’s internal systems, practices, projects, identifiers, cookies, logs, information contained in those logs, and internal communications and practices concerning Incognito and its proprietary functions. The opinion’s text contains OCR errors in portions of the listed page and line references, but the ruling clearly states that the motion was granted as to redacted portions.
Disposition and effect
The order granted the sealing requests only for the specified redacted portions. It did not resolve the merits of Brown’s claims against Google or otherwise decide the underlying discovery disputes. The ruling affects Google’s confidential information, plaintiffs’ personally identifiable information, and the public’s access to the identified court materials.
Classification
This is a procedural order because it concerns sealing court records, an ancillary matter, rather than the merits of the case.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.