Even Apple’s extremely valuable source code is not entitled to an arbitrary, unreasonable, and unduly restrictive protective order. Instead of adopting Apple’s proposed protective order, the United States District Court approved Farstone’s provision in its entirety. Farstone’s “reasonably necessary” standard was determined to be sufficient enough to protect Apple’s source code.

In Farstone Tech., Inc. v. Apple, Inc., despite agreeing to a majority of the proposed protective order’s terms, Farstone and Apple disagreed on the terms relating to the production of Apple’s source code. Specifically, Apple and Farstone could not agree on the limitations that should apply to Farstone’s ability to print Apple’s source code. Apple proposed that the printing must be “necessary” to prepare court filings and pleadings, while Farstone proposed that it should be allowed to print source code that is “reasonably necessary” for those purposes. Additionally, Apple wanted to establish two other limitations in the protective order, including a thirty page threshold and a two hundred and fifty page total cap. The thirty page threshold limitation would presume any printing of thirty sequential pages of source code to be excessive.

The court found that Apple’s proposed “necessary” term was unduly restrictive because Farstone will not likely be able to know what specific source code is necessary to prepare its case. Furthermore, the court found that Farstone’s “reasonably necessary” standard has a solid foundation in the Northern District of California’s Model Protective Order. Additionally, the court found Apple’s numerical limitations unreasonable because they appeared to be arbitrary. Apple failed to indicate how the thirty page threshold and the two hundred and fifty page cap “bear any actual relationship to the total source code available.” The court held that the “reasonably necessary” standard provided some guide and limit on the printing of source code and thus, approved Farstone’s source code printing provision.

It is imperative that Apple protects its trade secrets, such as its extremely valuable source coding. However, Apple must avoid proposing arbitrary, unreasonable, and unduly restrictive provisions in its protective orders to avoid courts from adopting its adversaries’ proposed terms. If Apple wishes to include numerical limitations in the future, it should justify why the numerical limits are necessary for the protective order to be sufficient.

Gary Discovery received a B.S. in Business Administration, with a concentration in Finance from the Bartley School of Business at Villanova University. He will receive his J.D. from Seton Hall University School of Law in 2015. After graduation, Gary will clerk for a presiding civil judge in the Superior Court of New Jersey.

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