WiAV Solutions Inc. v. HTC Corporation
- Paul Gardephe
- 1:19-cv-04978
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 6
In WiAV Solutions v. HTC, Judge Parker partly granted HTC’s sealing motion but denied broader redactions and required narrower proposals.
HTC, WiAV, and third-party signatories to the agreements were affected: limited commercially sensitive information could remain protected, but broader proposed redactions had to be revised and resubmitted.
What happened
WiAV Solutions Inc. v. HTC Corporation concerned HTC’s request to redact and seal agreements filed with its motion for summary judgment. WiAV did not oppose the request and provided additional explanation about one agreement.
Judge Parker explained that documents submitted for summary judgment are judicial records with a strong public-access presumption. She found that privacy and competitive-harm concerns could justify protecting certain commercial information, including license scope, licensed assets, and consideration, but HTC’s proposed redactions covered too much information.
Katharine H. Parker, United States Magistrate Judge, granted HTC’s motion only for the narrow category of information identified in the opinion and otherwise denied it. She directed the parties to submit revised proposed redactions by March 23, 2021.
The detailed version
- WiAV Solutions Inc. v. HTC Corporation · No. 1:19-cv-04978
- Paul Gardephe
- Mar. 9, 2021
Background
HTC moved to redact and seal portions of agreements and other documents filed in connection with its motion for summary judgment. HTC argued that the materials contained commercially sensitive, proprietary, and confidential business information whose disclosure could cause competitive harm to HTC and third-party agreement signatories. WiAV did not oppose the motion and filed a letter explaining why the Wiav-Mindspeed Agreement should be sealed. The agreements had also been designated for Attorneys’ Eyes Only under the parties’ discovery protective order.
Legal standard
The court explained that judicial records are subject to a general public right of access. Documents submitted for consideration on a motion for summary judgment are judicial documents and receive a strong presumption of public access under both common-law principles and the First Amendment. When the First Amendment right of access applies, sealing must be supported by specific findings showing that closure is essential to protect a higher value and is narrowly tailored to that purpose. A discovery protective order does not by itself satisfy this higher standard.
Analysis
The court found that serious privacy interests and potential competitive harm existed. Financial information, pricing data, royalty and other compensation arrangements, license scope, the assets licensed, and the consideration given for those rights could warrant protection. But the proposed redactions were not narrowly tailored. The agreements were heavily redacted, and the parties had apparently left unredacted only material they considered directly related to the cross motions for summary judgment. The court held that this approach improperly redacted information merely because the parties viewed it as irrelevant to the court’s decision.
The court gave examples of improper redactions. It found no reason to redact a provision in the NTT Docomo agreement concerning defenses to potential infringement claims. It also found no legitimate privacy basis for redacting a sentence in the Wiav-Mindspeed Agreement stating that Wiav had filed a civil action against Mindspeed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, because that lawsuit information was publicly available. The court also explained that its earlier approval of broader redactions for agreements filed with HTC’s verified answer did not automatically justify the new redactions.
Disposition
The court concluded that HTC had shown that the relevant privacy interests and potential competitive harm outweighed the strong presumption of public access, but that HTC’s proposed redactions were too broad. It therefore granted HTC’s motion to redact and seal only with respect to the narrow category of information described in the opinion and otherwise denied the motion. The court directed the parties to resubmit revised proposed redactions for all agreements filed in connection with the cross motions for summary judgment by March 23, 2021.
Read the full 6-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.