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A Washington, D.C., public interest group is seeking to unseal parts of the record in a federal court case in Utah, arguing keeping them secret violates a First Amendment right to access judicial records.
Public Citizen filed a motion Tuesday asking U.S. District Judge David Nuffer to allow it to intervene in the case in which a Utah company, SanMedica International, sued Amazon.com.
SanMedica claimed it was harmed by the online seller's continued use of a trademark in advertising even after Amazon.com stopped selling the Salt Lake City company's dietary supplement, called SeroVital.
Nuffer, in a heavily redacted ruling released last month, allowed portions of the lawsuit to go forward. The two companies then settled the case.
Public Citizen is asking to intervene on behalf of Georgetown University law professor Rebecca Tushnet, who said the SanMedia-Amazon case is important in the development of intellectual property law and the basis for Nuffer's ruling should be disclosed.
"If key facts about the claim can be kept secret, trademark law risks being different for every litigant, which could produce unfair and arbitrary results," Tushnet said in a Public Citizen news release.
Nuffer's decision and other court documents relied on figures on the number of Amazon.com's ads, the number of potential customers who clicked on the ads and the percentage that ubought products. Those figures were blacked out or in sealed court documents.
Tushnet is asking Nuffer to unseal those figures or to make specific findings in the record of why they should remain sealed.