Interdigital Technology Corporation & Ors v Lenovo Group Limited & Ors

Redactions to a judgment are exceptional. They require powerful reasons supported by cogent evidence directed to the specific information. Redactions must be kept to the minimum necessary to protect confidentiality without undermining public understanding of the court’s reasoning.

The court must conduct a case-specific balancing exercise, considering the nature and effect of publication, the nature of the proceedings, the relationship between the information and the judgment, and the relationship between the confidentiality claimant and the proceedings. In FRAND proceedings, current or recently expired royalty rates and licence terms may warrant protection, while historic information or information necessary to explain important reasoning may require publication.

This was a first-instance judgment on confidentiality issues arising after the court’s FRAND judgment in the same proceedings, published in confidential and initial public versions as [2023] EWHC 538 (Pat) and [2023] EWHC 539 (Pat). The court considered whether further redactions should be removed from the public version.

InterDigital, its licensees and data providers generally sought to maintain the redactions. Lenovo argued that open justice required greater disclosure. The central issue was how the competing interests in protecting commercially sensitive licensing information and enabling public understanding of the court’s reasoning should be balanced.

1. The court applied the principles stated by Birss J in Unwired Planet v Huawei [2017] EWHC 3083 (Pat) at [23]-[24]. The strong principle is that judgments should normally be publicly available. Redactions require powerful reasons supported by cogent evidence addressing the details, and must be kept to the bare minimum.

2. The assessment is specific to the case, the information, the proceedings and the position of the person seeking confidentiality. Relevant factors include the nature of the information, the effect of publication, the nature of the proceedings, the relationship between the information and the judgment, and the relationship between the confidentiality claimant and the proceedings.

3. Applying those principles, the court refused to publish even a redacted version of the X1 diagram because the remaining material could be combined with information elsewhere in the public judgment to reverse-engineer individual royalty rates. Similar protection was maintained for current or recently expired licence rates, terms and sensitive information attributable to particular licensees.

4. By contrast, the court ordered publication of historic material and other information necessary to explain important parts of the FRAND reasoning. This included selected historic licence information, anonymised and randomised rates for certain licensees, and historic PA Consulting material relevant to the rejection of the top-down approach. The court retained later PA Consulting material and other information where confidentiality remained commercially important.

5. The court declined to make an order for Apple’s costs because the request was made without adequate prior notice. A corrected confidential judgment and a revised public judgment were to be issued.