Nielsen Consumer LLC v. Circana Group, L.P.

Background

Nielsen Consumer LLC, doing business as NielseniQ, brought claims against Circana Group, L.P. for breach of contract, misuse and misappropriation of confidential and proprietary information and trade secrets, breach of good faith and fair dealing, and unfair competition. The parties moved to seal documents submitted in connection with Circana’s request for a pre-motion conference. The motions were filed at ECF Nos. 286, 292, and 295.

Legal standard

The court explained that judicial documents—filed materials relevant to the court’s judicial function—are presumptively available to the public under the common law and the First Amendment. The court must determine whether the materials are judicial documents, the strength of the public-access presumption, and whether competing interests outweigh that presumption. Protecting competitively sensitive business information can justify sealing, but any sealing must be narrowly tailored. A confidentiality designation or protective order by itself does not justify sealing.

Because these materials were filed in connection with discovery disputes rather than dispositive motions, the court applied a lower public-access presumption. The court nevertheless held that all of the materials were judicial documents subject to at least some presumption of public access.

Rulings on the filings

The court granted the requests to seal the redacted portions of the three letter motions at ECF Nos. 287, 293, and 296. It found that the redacted information could fairly be characterized as commercially sensitive business information that could cause competitive harm.

For the exhibits to ECF No. 287:

- Exhibit A, which contained a list reflecting data similar to a customer list or research methodology, could be filed under seal in its entirety. - Exhibit B, NielsenIQ’s responses and objections to Circana’s requests for production, could not be sealed broadly. The parties were ordered to submit a revised version with only narrowly tailored redactions of references to sensitive information. - Exhibit C could be sealed only in part, covering sensitive information under headers F, K, and L. The remaining portions had to be publicly filed. - The request to seal Exhibit D in its entirety was denied. Circana was ordered to refile it with narrow redactions to specified portions containing commercially sensitive information. - Exhibit E contained no commercially sensitive information. It could not be sealed and was ordered unsealed.

For the exhibit to ECF No. 293, Nielsen was ordered to resubmit Circana’s responses to Nielsen’s requests for production with narrower redactions. The court found that sealing the entire document was inappropriate.

For the exhibits to ECF No. 296:

- The request to seal Exhibit A, which contained attorney communications about an electronically stored information protocol and a tracked-changes version of the proposed protocol, was denied. The exhibit was ordered unsealed in its entirety. - Circana was ordered to publicly file Exhibit B with only limited redactions to lines 18 through 22. - Circana was ordered to refile Exhibit C publicly with redactions limited to the listed sections containing references to commercially sensitive information.

Disposition

The court’s conclusion states that the plaintiff’s motion to seal was granted in part and denied in part. The Clerk was directed to terminate the motions to seal at ECF Nos. 286, 292, and 295. The Clerk was also directed to unseal ECF Nos. 287-5 and 296-1, and only those specific exhibits. The parties were ordered to publicly file the documents and exhibits with narrower redactions by March 15, 2024. If they did not do so, the court stated that it would direct that the documents be unsealed.