Amazon.com, Inc. v. Personal Web Technologies, LLC

Background

Amazon.com, Inc., Amazon Web Services, Inc., and Twitch Interactive, Inc. filed an administrative motion seeking limited relief from the protective order in this case. They sought to use certain discovery produced in the federal litigation to oppose anti-SLAPP motions to dismiss in a state-court action concerning the PersonalWeb receivership. Claria Innovations, LLC; Europlay Capital Advisors, LLC; Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Inc.; Monto Holdings Pty Ltd.; and PersonalWeb opposed the motion. The opinion refers to these parties collectively as the “Opposing Parties.”

The protective order provided that protected material could be used only for purposes of the federal action, but also stated that the order could be modified.

Procedural issue

The Opposing Parties argued that Amazon’s motion was procedurally improper because it presented a discovery dispute as an administrative motion rather than as a joint submission under the court’s Civil and Discovery Referral Matters Standing Order. The court agreed that the request concerned a discovery dispute and did not fall within the types of matters ordinarily handled by an administrative motion. The court nevertheless concluded that the parties had received a reasonable opportunity to present their arguments and would decide the merits. The court cautioned the parties to comply with the Civil Local Rules and standing orders in future filings and resolved the dispute without oral argument.

Legal standard

The court relied on Ninth Circuit precedent favoring access to discovery materials for use in related litigation to promote judicial economy and avoid duplicating discovery. A party seeking to modify a protective order must show that the protected discovery is relevant to, and generally discoverable in, the related proceeding. The court must also consider other factors, including the opposing party’s reliance interests. Modification of the protective order does not itself determine whether the related court will ultimately order production of particular documents or admit them into evidence.

Ruling

The court found that Amazon made the required showing for the specific categories of documents listed in its proposed order at Dkt. 854-6. The court therefore granted Amazon’s motion and modified the protective order to permit the requested use of those categories in the collateral state-court proceeding.

The court expressly did not decide whether any specific document was discoverable or admissible in the state-court receivership action. The state court would make those determinations, and parties in that litigation could raise specific relevance and privilege objections there.