Montres Breguet S.A. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.

Background

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Samsung Electronics America, Inc., referred to collectively in the filing as Samsung, asked the court to redact limited portions of a transcript from a February 11, 2021 conference. The conference concerned open issues involving the parties’ proposed electronic-discovery and protective orders, as well as case scheduling.

Samsung’s counsel had discussed confidential revenue information relating to sales of the watch-face applications at issue in the litigation. Samsung identified specific pages and lines containing revenue dollar figures and sought to redact only those figures from the publicly filed transcript while sealing the unredacted version.

Samsung’s Position

Samsung argued that the transcript was a judicial document, meaning a court filing or record relevant to the judicial process, but that the public-access interest was weaker because the request covered only specific financial figures discussed during an early conference. Samsung contended that disclosure could cause competitive harm to Samsung and third-party developers who sell watch-face applications through the Samsung Galaxy Store.

According to Samsung, public disclosure would give competing developers access to revenue information that they otherwise would not have and could give them an unfair advantage. Samsung argued that these business and privacy interests outweighed the public interest in access to the specific figures.

Ruling

The court approved Samsung’s proposed redactions, stating that the material represented confidential business information. The order approved the limited redactions to the conference transcript. The opinion does not separately state a broader ruling on the underlying claims in the litigation.

Classification and scope

This is a procedural order concerning sealing and redaction of a court transcript. It does not decide the merits of the parties’ underlying dispute.