In Re Micron Technology, Inc., et al.

When parties enter into the civil-discovery process with an agreed-upon, court-endorsed set of guardrails in a protective order, they reasonably expect those rules to be followed and enforced. That did not happen here. The plaintiff below, a Chinese state-owned entity, sought unsecure paper copies of sensitive technical information about Petitioners’ semiconductor chips. The discovery rules governing that request required the plaintiff to show that the paper copies were reasonably necessary to the litigation and not excessive. When Petitioners sought to enforce that rule, the district court abandoned the terms of the parties’ agreement and rubber-stamped plaintiff’s request. In doing so, the court ignored the parties’ agreedto limits on production of paper copies, the readily available alternative means for securely producing the same information, and the Executive Branch’s designation of that Chinese state-owned entity as posing “a significant risk of becoming involved in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.” The question presented is: Does a district court clearly and indisputably err in ordering production of sensitive technical documentation without applying the standards set forth in the parties’ protective order and without considering the Executive Branch’s national-security interests in the documentation at issue?