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Federal court records belong to everyone. But one federal court in Texas lets patent litigants treat courts like their own private tribunals, effectively shutting out the public.
When EFF tried to intervene and push for greater access to a patent dispute earlier this year, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas rejected our effort. EFF appealed and last week filed our opening brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
EFF is not the only one concerned by the district court’s decision. Several organizations filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of our appeal. Below, we explain the stakes of this case and why others are concerned about the implications of the district court’s secrecy.
Courts too often let patent litigants shut out the public
Secrecy in patent litigation is an enduring problem, and EFF has repeatedly pushed for greater transparency by intervening in patent lawsuits to vindicate the public’s right to access judicial records.
But sometimes, courts don’t let us—and instead decide to prioritize corporations’ confidentiality interests over the public’s right to access records filed on the record in the public’s courts.
That’s exactly what happened in Entropic Communications, LLC. v. Charter Commuications, Inc. Entropic, a semiconductor provider, sued Charter, one of the nation’s largest media companies, for allegedly infringing six Entropic patents for cable modem technology. Charter argued that it had a license defense because the patents cover technology required to comply with the industry-leading cable data transmission standard, Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS). Its argument raises a core patent law question: when is a patent “essent
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