Patent Lawsuits Should Not Be Shrouded in Secrecy | Electronic Frontier Foundation

"The public has a First Amendment right to access court records, and that right is generally only curtailed when there is 'good cause' to do so. Unfortunately, when it comes to patent cases, courts routinely allow [PDF] parties to file entire documents under seal, without any public-redacted version being made available. That’s why EFF, with the assistance of Durie Tangri, has filed a motion [PDF] to intervene and unseal documents in a patent case, Blue Spike v. Audible Magic. The court has allowed the parties in this case to keep more than half of the docket under seal, including the court’s own rulings, making it impossible to fully understand and evaluate both the parties’ arguments and the court’s decisions. As we explain in our filing, this degree of sealing is improper, especially in light of the public’s interest in the case. Blue Spike is a repeat patent litigation player. Lex Machina (a service that collects patent litigation filings from across the country) indicates there are over 100 lawsuits involving Blue Spike and its patents. Unsurprisingly then, Blue Spike’s campaign has garnered press attention. We’ve written about Blue Spike and its patents in connection with our 'Stupid Patent of the Month' series. Others have written about Blue Spike too. Blue Spike claims to own patents relating to 'forensic watermarking, signal abstracts, data security, software watermarks, product license keys, ASLR, deep packet inspection, [and] license code for authorized software to bandwidth securitization.' It maintains a website that implies that it makes and sells products that practice the patents. But the transcript [PDF] of the hearing on the parties’ various motions filed in the case (one of the few public documents available) raises serious questions about both the scope of Blue Spike’s patents and its claims to be an operating company that actually practices its patents ..."