Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-3_19-cv-04238/USCOURTS-cand-3_19-cv-04238-4/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 890
Nature of Suit: Other Statutory Actions
Cause of Action: 18:1836(b) - Civil Action to Protect Trade Secrets

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1 Case No. 3:19-cv-4238-MMC-RMI

[PROPOSED] ESI ORDER

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 

SAN FRANCISCO DIVISION 

PROOFPOINT, INC.; CLOUDMARK LLC, 

Plaintiffs, 

vs. 

VADE SECURE, INCORPORATED; VADE 

SECURE SASU; OLIVIER LEMARIÉ, 

Defendants. 

 

CASE NO. 3:19-cv-4238-MMC-RMI 

[PROPOSED] ORDER ON DISCOVERY 

OF ELECTRONICALLY STORED 

INFORMATION 

1. PURPOSE 

This Order will govern discovery of electronically stored information (“ESI”) in this case as a 

supplement to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, this Court’s Guidelines for the Discovery of 

Electronically Stored Information, and any other applicable orders and rules.

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2. COOPERATION 

The parties are aware of the importance the Court places on cooperation and commit to 

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Defendants reserve all rights relating to the applicability of data privacy restrictions, including 

but not limited to the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union (the “GDPR”). 

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2 Case No. 3:19-cv-4238-MMC-RMI

[PROPOSED] ESI ORDER

cooperate in good faith throughout this matter consistent with the Court’s Guidelines for the 

Discovery of ESI. 

3. PRESERVATION 

The parties have discussed their preservation obligations and needs, and agree that 

preservation of potentially relevant ESI will be reasonable and proportionate. To reduce the costs 

and burdens of preservation and to ensure proper ESI is preserved, the parties have identified a nonexhaustive list of data sources that are not reasonably accessible because of undue burden or cost 

pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(B), and agree that the circumstances of this case do not warrant 

the review of production or preservation of the following: 

 temporary data stored in a computer’s random access memory (RAM) or other 

ephemeral data that are difficult to preserve without disabling the computer’s 

operating system; 

 residual, fragmented, or damaged data; 

 online access data, such as temporary Internet files, history, cache, cookies, and the 

like; 

 information stored in unallocated space in file systems on magnetic media; 

 information created or copied during the routine, good-fair performance of processes 

for the deployment, maintenance, retirement, and disposition of computer equipment 

by the party, except for relevant files and materials that may be stored on computer 

equipment subject to said deployment, maintenance, retirement, or disposition, such 

as work or personal computers or other electronic storage devices. 

The parties further agree that the circumstances of this case do not warrant the review or 

production of backup tapes or other long-term storage media that were created for use as data backup or disaster recovery media, but that these data sources should nonetheless be preserved. The 

parties agree to the production of data and/or documents from backup tapes or other long-term 

storage should discovery reveal that relevant data resides in such data source(s), that such data is 

not duplicative of other data that is more readily available to the parties through alternative data 

source(s), and provided that a reasonable and narrowly-tailored discovery request has been made. 

Case 3:19-cv-04238-MMC Document 118 Filed 02/04/20 Page 2 of 7
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3 Case No. 3:19-cv-4238-MMC-RMI

[PROPOSED] ESI ORDER

Notwithstanding the foregoing, a party may, upon a showing of good cause, seek 

discovery from one or more of the data sources subject to the above-mentioned exceptions or request 

that said data source(s) be preserved. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the terms of this Section 3 

shall not apply to any data sources that are known to a party to contain information relevant to a 

claim or defense in this action. 

4. SEARCH 

The parties agree that in responding to an initial Fed. R. Civ. P. 34 request, or earlier if 

appropriate, they will meet and confer about methods to search ESI in order to identify ESI that is 

subject to production in discovery and filter out ESI that is not subject to discovery, if necessary to 

avoid undue burden. The parties agree, however, that any such meet and confer will not delay the 

party’s obligation to promptly begin its search for and collection of responsive ESI from relevant 

file and data locations, custodians, share drives, source code repositories, and the like. 

Nothing in this Order prevents the parties from agreeing to use technology assisted review 

and other techniques insofar as their use improves the efficacy of discovery. 

For the avoidance of doubt, nothing in this Order permits a party to otherwise withhold from 

production a known responsive document (e.g., responsive to a discovery request, relevant to the 

issues in the case, or that may otherwise lead to discovery of relevant information) within the party’s 

possession, custody, or control. 

5. PRODUCTION FORMATS 

The parties agree to produce for each document: 

 except as otherwise provided, the documents will be produced in single-page color 

JPEG images for documents containing content in color, and single-page Group IV 

TIFF images for black-and-white documents; 

 with document-level text files containing extracted text or OCR, if extracted text is 

unavailable, and named according to Bates Begin number; 

 for spreadsheets (.xls, .xlsx, .csv, etc.), the document should be produced in native 

format with a corresponding endorsed placeholder; 

 for presentations (.ppt, .pptx, etc.), the document should be produced with any 

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4 Case No. 3:19-cv-4238-MMC-RMI

[PROPOSED] ESI ORDER

speaker notes, and to the extent such document contains animations, should be 

produced in native format with a corresponding endorsed placeholder; 

 for documents that contain redlines, track changes, and/or comments, the document 

should be produced with the relevant redlines, track changes, and comments 

displayed; 

 load files (.DAT and .OPT) that include the following metadata: Bates Begin, Bates 

End, Bates BegAttach, Bates EndAttach, NativeLink (where appropriate), Extracted 

Text Link; 

 load files will also include, where available and applicable: Custodian, All 

Custodians, From, To, CC, BCC, Subject, Date Sent, Time Sent, File Extension, File 

Name, Author, Last Saved By, Date Created, Time Created, Date Last Modified, 

Time Last Modified, Message ID, MD5Hash; 

 documents unable to be imaged will be produced in native file format with a Bates 

numbered placeholder indicating as such. 

Reasonable efforts will be used to scan documents at or near their original size, so that the 

print or image of the document appears straight and not skewed. Reducing image size may be 

necessary to display production numbers and confidentiality designations without obscuring any 

content of the document. Physically oversized originals will appear reduced. A producing Party 

reserves the right to determine whether to produce oversized documents in their original size. A 

receiving Party may request that specific oversized documents be produced in their original size for 

good cause. 

If particular documents warrant a different format, the parties will cooperate to arrange for 

the mutually acceptable production of such documents. For example, if the JPEG or TIFF images 

of a document cannot be produced with sufficient clarity, then a party may request that such 

document be produced in native format instead. The parties agree not to degrade the searchability 

of documents as part of the document production process. 

6. PHASING 

When a party propounds a discovery request pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 34, the parties agree 

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5 Case No. 3:19-cv-4238-MMC-RMI

[PROPOSED] ESI ORDER

to collect and produce responsive documents on a rolling basis, such that production of responsive 

documents ready for production is not delayed pending completion of the producing Party’s 

investigation and collection. 

To the extent that any responsive documents are subject to third-party confidentiality 

obligations, such as notice provisions, the producing Party shall identify and describe such 

obligations and provide a timeline for compliance with any such provisions and production of said 

documents. 

The parties do not otherwise anticipate phasing discovery at this point, but agree to revisit 

the issue if the need arises. 

7. DISCOVERY OF ELECTRONIC MAIL 

General ESI production requests under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 34 and 45 shall not 

include email or other forms of electronic correspondence (collectively “email”). To obtain email 

parties must propound specific email production requests. 

Email production requests shall only be propounded for specific issues, rather than general 

discovery of a product or business. 

Email production requests shall be phased to occur after the parties have exchanged initial 

disclosures and basic information regarding the identity of relevant witnesses and custodians. 

Email production requests shall identify the custodian, search terms, and time frame. The 

parties shall cooperate to identify the proper custodians, proper search terms and proper timeframe. 

Accordingly, Plaintiffs (collectively) and Defendants (collectively) may serve up to two (2) 

interrogatories directed to identification of proper custodians, search terms, and timeframe. These 

interrogatories will not count toward the parties’ discovery limits in this case. 

Plaintiffs (collectively) shall limit their email production requests to a total of fifteen (15) 

custodians for all such requests. Defendants (collectively) shall limit their email production requests 

to a total of eight (8) custodians for all such requests. The parties may jointly agree to modify this 

limit without the Court’s leave. The Court shall consider contested requests for additional 

custodians, upon showing a distinct need based on the size, complexity, and issues of this specific 

case. Cost-shifting may be considered as part of any such request. 

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6 Case No. 3:19-cv-4238-MMC-RMI

[PROPOSED] ESI ORDER

Plaintiffs (collectively) and Defendants (collectively) shall limit their respective email 

production requests to a total of ten (10) search terms per custodian. The parties may jointly agree 

to modify this limit without the Court’s leave. The Court shall consider contested requests for 

additional search terms per custodian, upon showing a distinct need based on the size, complexity, 

and issues of this specific case. The Court encourages the parties to confer on a process to test the 

efficacy of the search terms. The search terms shall be narrowly tailored to particular issues. 

Indiscriminate terms, such as the producing company’s name or its product name, are inappropriate 

unless combined with narrowing search criteria that sufficiently reduce the risk of overproduction. 

A conjunctive combination of multiple words or phrases (e.g., “computer” and “system”) narrows 

the search and shall count as a single search term. A disjunctive combination of multiple words or 

phrases (e.g., “computer” or “system”) broadens the search, and thus each word or phrase shall count 

as a separate search term unless they are variants of the same word or are translations of the same 

word or its variants in a foreign language (e.g., French). Use of narrowing search criteria (e.g., 

“and,” “but not,” “w/x”) is encouraged to limit the production and shall be considered when 

determining whether to shift costs for disproportionate discovery. Should a party serve email 

production requests with search terms beyond the limits agreed to by the parties or granted by the 

Court pursuant to this paragraph, this shall be considered in determining whether any party shall 

bear all reasonable costs caused by such additional discovery. 

For the avoidance of doubt, nothing in this Order permits a party to otherwise withhold from 

production a known responsive email (e.g., responsive to a discovery request, relevant to the issues 

in the case, or that may otherwise lead to discovery of relevant information) within the party’s 

possession, custody, or control on the basis that the email did not fall within the scope of a requesting 

party’s email discovery requests. 

8. DOCUMENTS PROTECTED FROM DISCOVERY 

Privileged documents will be withheld on a document-by-document basis. If one member 

of a responsive family is privileged and the other members of the family are not privileged, the 

privileged document will be withheld or redacted and each non-privileged family member will be 

produced as long as any member of the family is responsive. 

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7 Case No. 3:19-cv-4238-MMC-RMI

[PROPOSED] ESI ORDER

If the producing Party redacts information from a page, the producing Party shall “burn” a 

black box onto the document image over the information it intends to redact. The redaction box 

shall also contain visible text indicating that the document was redacted. If the producing Party 

redacts a document, the metadata fields must nonetheless be produced to the extent the fields are 

already populated in the ordinary course, with the exception of email subject, which may be withheld 

from all redacted emails to the extent the subject contains privileged information. Additional 

metadata fields deemed privileged may be redacted only to the extent necessary to protect the 

privilege. 

The parties agree to discuss the appropriate scope and terms for privilege logs. However, 

the parties agree that privilege logs need not include communications authored following the filing 

of the Complaint in the first instance, and that communications may be identified on a privilege log 

by category, rather than individually, if appropriate. 

9. MODIFICATION

This Stipulated ESI Order may be modified by a stipulated order of the parties or by the

Court for good cause shown. 

IT IS SO ORDERED. 

DATED: ________________ _____________________________________ 

Hon. Robert M. Illman 

United States Magistrate Judge 

February 4, 2020

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