Blue Spike v. Audible Magic is a patent case in which EFF intervened in order to achieve greater public access to the proceedings.

In this case, Blue Spike accused Audible Magic of infringing various patents. The parties filed motions for summary judgment relating to various allegations made in the case. Almost all of these filings were completely sealed, denying the public.  access to any of the arguments or claims made by the parties.

Worse, the resulting opinions from the court that defined various rights held by the parties were also shielded from public view.

Because access to court filings is fundamental to understanding both the patent system and our judicial system, EFF moved to intervene in the case to ask the court to release public versions of significant court filings. Audible Magic readily agreed to EFF’s requests to intervene and unseal materials. Blue Spike opposed both EFF’s intervention and the unsealing of court records.

EFF was allowed to intervene and the court then asked the parties to provide justifications for any materials that were to be withheld from the public. As a result, a significant volume of legal filings, including court opinions, were publicly released either in full or with minimal redactions. Moreover, Blue Spike agreed to not oppose any similar request for redactions in the future in any matter, unless it had good cause to do so, and agreed to file public-redacted versions of all its filings in the future.