Patent Litigation Transparency
EFF works to push back against unjustified sealing of documents in court cases, including in patent cases where improper sealing is practically routine. The public has a First Amendment right to access court proceedings and this right is violated when documents are sealed without good reason. Ultimately, we hope that greater transparency will foster better public understanding of how patents function within our system. We have successfully intervened in several patent cases in order to provide greater transparency to the public.
In both the district court case and at the Patent Office, it is clear that parties are often sealing much more information than the law allows. It is only when challenged do they agree to reveal what should have been public in the first place. But it should not require a third party’s intervention before the courts and parties make public what should have been public all along.
This page collects EFF’s transparency work in specific patent cases, both in courts and before the Patent Office, and our work pushing for better rules governing transparency.
Updates
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Did one Stupid Patent of the Month winner enforce its patent in an exceptional manner, so much so that it has to pay defendants’ attorneys’ fees? That is a question a court in the Eastern District of Texas is being asked to decide, with a public hearing on the...
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Should patent lawsuits filed in federal courts be hidden from the public? We don’t think so, especially where a patent owner may be suing multiple people based on the same claim. Apart from the general principle that legal processes should be open to the public whenever possible, as a practical...
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Court Orders Blue Spike to Explain Why It's Keeping the Public in the Dark
In a victory for the First Amendment and public access to court proceedings, a magistrate judge ruled in favor of EFF’s motion to unseal documents in a patent case in the Eastern District of...
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Last month, EFF moved to intervene in a patent case in order to unseal records we believe have been improperly kept from the public. Yesterday, the court granted EFF’s motion to intervene, and in doing so, rejected a troubling argument being put forth by the patent owner.
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Fight to Make Documents Public Continues
In December, 2014, EFF asked a court to allow it to intervene in a patent case so that we could formally request that certain documents in the court record be unsealed and made available to the public. Yesterday, EFF’s motion to intervene was...
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