Unwired Planet International, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd and Huawei Technologies UK Co. Ltd v. Unwired Planet LLC, High Court of Justice, London, UK, 30 November 2017, [2017] EWHC 3083 (Pat)

This is the latest judgement in the on-going Unwired Planet saga.

On 5 April 2017, Birss J issued two judgements in the FRAND trial in these proceedings. A confidential judgement setting out the judge’s reasoning in full was provided to the parties, whereas a redacted judgement (“the 711 judgement”) was made public. The confidential judgement included numerous references to material which at least one of the parties to the proceedings claimed was confidential and should not be made public.

Previously the Judge took the view that, provided the resulting public judgement fairly set out his reasoning which the public could comprehend, he would take a generous view of the claims to confidentiality asserted by the parties so that a public judgement could be issued at the same time the full judgement was given formally.

The present case concerned a full hearing of the arguments as to what should actually be entitled to remain confidential.

The judge set out five factors which he considered should be applied:
i) the nature of the information itself noting that cases in which some redaction may more readily be accepted could include technical trade secrets and private information about family life;
ii) the effect of the publication of the information;
iii) the nature of the proceedings;
iv) the relationship between the information in issue and the judgment (as well as the proceedings as a whole); and
v) the relationship between the person seeking to restrain publication of the information and the proceedings themselves (including the judgment).

Applying these principles to the facts of the case and accepting the parties submissions that all the commercial licencing information in issue is kept confidential in the telecoms industry and that publication of the commercial licencing information would materially weaken the competitive positions of the relevant parties, the judge issued a revised version of the 711 judgement, upholding most of the previously requested redactions.

A copy of the revised 711 judgement can be found here.
A copy of the judgement in the present case can be found here.

Headnote: Nicholas Fox, Simmons & Simmons LLP