Licensing Matters Global, Limited v. Buzzfeed, Inc.

Background

BuzzFeed, Inc., the defendant and counter-plaintiff, asked the court for permission to redact certain financial terms and numerical values from the public versions of its memorandum of law, statement of material facts, and supporting declarations and exhibits filed in support of its motion for summary judgment. The information concerned BuzzFeed’s contract with Fackelmann GmBH + Co. KG.

The case had a stipulated confidentiality agreement and protective order governing discovery. That order required a party seeking to file material under seal to obtain a court order addressing the specific documents or portions of documents at issue. BuzzFeed publicly filed versions containing proposed redactions and separately submitted unredacted versions with the proposed redactions identified.

BuzzFeed’s Request

BuzzFeed sought to redact royalty rates, minimum-guarantee payment amounts, advance payment amounts, marketing fees, and other numerical values that would allow someone to determine the agreement’s financial terms. BuzzFeed argued that the financial terms were nonpublic, competitively sensitive, and unrelated to the contract-interpretation issues central to its summary-judgment motion. It further argued that disclosure could allow others to use the information strategically in licensing negotiations and cause competitive harm.

Court’s Ruling

The court’s order states: “Application provisionally granted.” The order therefore provisionally granted BuzzFeed’s application to redact the specified financial terms from the publicly filed summary-judgment papers. The ruling was about public access to filing materials and did not decide the merits of BuzzFeed’s underlying motion for summary judgment.