Public Access to Records in Patent Cases
From Finjan, Inc. v. Juniper Network, Inc., decided Feb. 10 by Judge William Alsup (N.D. Cal.), but just posted on Westlaw:
A Daubert order [related to admissibility of expert testimony] on the eve of a patent-infringement trial in December 2018 excluded patent owner’s damages expert for reliance on a belated infringement theory but rejected the challenge to defendants’ counter expert. A companion order denied Finjan’s request to seal references to its patent valuation and licensing activity in the latter half of that order. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded the order for more particularized findings, specifically a conscientious balancing of the interests of Finjan and its third-party negotiation partners against the public interest in disclosure. Finjan moves anew to seal the material. The third parties have waived their interests, and Juniper has abandoned the Court to evaluate the matter alone.
The material will be disclosed. To begin, Finjan mistakenly cites Center for Auto Safety v. Chrysler Group, LLC for the proposition that the “nondispositive” Daubert order might be sealed merely for good, as opposed to compelling, cause. Not so. Were Finjan to read further along it would have seen that our court of appeals explicitly rejected a mechanical “dispositive” versus “nondispositive” distinction in deciding what
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