IBM Corporation v. Micro Focus, Inc.

Background

The parties asked to seal deposition-transcript excerpts filed in connection with the defendant’s request for sanctions. The defendant filed a letter-motion concerning sanctions with deposition excerpts attached. The plaintiff later filed a reply containing additional deposition excerpts and asked that those materials be sealed. The defendant separately asked that one of the deposition filings remain sealed under the case’s protective order.

Legal standard

The court explained that judicial documents generally carry a presumption of public access under the common law and the First Amendment. A judicial document is a filed item relevant to the court’s work and useful in the judicial process. To overcome that presumption, a court must find that sealing is necessary to protect a higher value and is narrowly tailored to protect that interest. The presumption is generally lower for materials filed in connection with discovery disputes than for materials introduced at trial or filed with dispositive motions.

Ruling

The court found that the deposition excerpts were judicial documents because they were relevant to deciding the defendant’s sanctions request. But the case’s protective order designated the excerpts as highly confidential before the review period and confidential during that period. The review period was defined as 30 days after the final deposition transcripts became available.

The court granted the parties’ requests to the extent that ECF Nos. 124-1, 132-1, and 132-2 would remain temporarily under seal and accessible only to selected parties until the review period ended. The parties must notify the court when the review period ends and state whether either party seeks continued sealing. Any request to keep the documents entirely or partly sealed must be made through another motion explaining sufficient reasons for continued sealing or proposing narrowly tailored redactions. The clerk was directed to close out ECF Nos. 131 and 135.