Brown v. Google LLC
- Yvonne Rogers
- 4:20-cv-03664
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 12
In Brown v. Google LLC, Judge Van Keulen granted motions to seal specified discovery materials while leaving the case’s merits undecided.
The order affects the plaintiffs, Google LLC, and members of the public seeking access to the specified court records. It protects certain Google confidential and proprietary information and some plaintiffs’ sensitive information from public disclosure.
What happened
In Brown v. Google LLC, the parties asked the court to keep certain materials filed with discovery-related motions from public view. The requested materials included portions of submissions, exhibits, documents, and a deposition transcript excerpt.
The court applied a lower legal standard because the materials concerned discovery disputes rather than the underlying claims. It found good cause to protect Google’s confidential technical, proprietary, operational, and security-related information, as well as sensitive information belonging to the plaintiffs.
Judge Van Keulen granted the sealing requests. Some documents were sealed only in specified portions, while other exhibits were sealed in their entirety; the order did not decide the merits of the lawsuit.
The detailed version
- Brown v. Google LLC · No. 4:20-cv-03664
- Yvonne Rogers
- Jan. 6, 2022
Background
The court considered administrative motions to file materials under seal in connection with discovery disputes. The motions were docketed at Nos. 291, 354, 356, 360, and 361. Filing under seal means restricting public access to court-filed material.
Legal standard
The court explained that judicial records generally carry a strong presumption of public access. For records connected to motions more than tangentially related to the merits of a case, a party ordinarily must show compelling reasons for secrecy. For records connected to motions that are not related, or are only tangentially related, to the merits, the lower good-cause standard under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c) applies. The court held that the good-cause standard applied because the materials were submitted with discovery-related motions rather than motions addressing the merits of the case. The court also noted that a sealing decision could differ under another standard or in another context.
Rulings
The court granted the motion associated with Docket No. 291 as to specified redacted portions of the motion seeking relief and several exhibits. The court also granted the requests associated with Docket Nos. 354 and 356 as to the highlighted portions of joint submissions.
For Docket No. 360, the court granted the requests as to specified redacted portions of multiple documents. One document was redacted in its entirety. The court found that the materials contained confidential and proprietary information about Google’s internal systems, operations, projects, strategies, system designs, business practices, encryption, research, methodologies, product features, and related information. It stated that disclosure could affect Google’s competitive standing and increase cybersecurity risks. The court also relied on protection of confidential information and plaintiffs’ sensitive information in certain materials associated with Docket No. 291.
The court granted the Docket No. 361 request concerning exhibits relied upon by Google in a joint submission regarding the deposition of Google officer Sundar Pichai. The order therefore granted the sealing requests in the specified forms, including partial redactions and, for some exhibits, sealing in full. It did not resolve the underlying claims or discovery disputes on their merits.
Read the full 12-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.