Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-4_13-md-02420/USCOURTS-cand-4_13-md-02420-52/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 410
Nature of Suit: Antitrust
Cause of Action: 15:15 Antitrust Litigation

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 

OAKLAND DIVISION 

IN RE LITHIUM ION BATTERIES 

ANTITRUST LITIGATION 

Case No. 13-md-02420 YGR (DMR) 

CLASS ACTION 

[PROPOSED] SEARCH TERM 

PROTOCOL 

This Documents Relates to: 

ALL ACTIONS 

 

DATE ACTION FILED: Oct. 3, 2012 

Case 4:13-md-02420-YGR Document 679 Filed 03/12/15 Page 1 of 6
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010330-11 742881 V1 

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[PROP.] SEARCH TERM PROTOCOL – No. 13-MD-02420 

YGR (DMR) 

A. General Provisions 

1. The Parties agree to meet and confer concerning search methodologies, including 

without limitation, the use of key word search terms. For any Party1

 to this litigation who chooses 

to use keyword search terms to collect or cull documents for production in this litigation, the 

following protocol shall be used for the application and testing of search terms. 

2. The parties further agree that the Guidelines for the Discovery of Electronically 

Stored Information (“the ESI Guidelines”) and the Checklist for Rule 26(f) Meet and Confer 

Regarding Electronically Stored Information (“the ESI Checklist”) adopted by the U.S. District 

Court for the Northern District of California shall apply as appropriate to ESI discovery, including 

any meet and confer sessions regarding ESI discovery. 

3. The Parties recognize that even though a document contains one or more of the 

search terms identified in accordance with the procedures listed below, such document may not be 

responsive to any document request. In such cases, the Responding Party is not required to produce 

such documents. 

4. A Responding Party choosing to use search terms to identify potentially responsive 

documents shall exercise reasonable due diligence in investigating and analyzing its data in 

providing its proposed list of search terms to the Requesting Party prior to applying the search 

terms. Examples of such due diligence include, but are not limited to: identification of commonly 

misspelled words appearing on responsive documents or electronically stored information; 

identifying idiosyncratic language and terms of art utilized by a party in responsive documents and 

by interviewing key custodians about the same; utilizing quality control metrics; and using an 

iterative search approach to identify the terms most likely to locate responsive documents. 

 1

 As used herein, a “Requesting Party” is the party who has served Requests for Production and 

a “Responding Party” is the Party upon whom such Requests for Production were served. For 

purposes of this Search Term Protocol, with respect to Defendants, the terms “Requesting Party” 

and “Responding Party” refer to Defendant families. Consistent with the Court’s Order, ECF No. 

593, the Sanyo entities and the Panasonic entities are to be treated as separate Defendant families 

for purposes of this search term protocol. 

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[PROP.] SEARCH TERM PROTOCOL – No. 13-MD-02420 

YGR (DMR) 

B. Protocol 

1. Document Collection: In accordance with this Court’s December 3, 2014 

“Stipulation and Order Re Discovery Plans,” each Responding Party will collect documents for 

custodians and from locations agreed to between the parties or pursuant to Court order. Each 

Responding Party will collect documents and information for each agreed-upon or court-ordered 

custodian within twenty-one (21) days of such agreement or court order, or as otherwise agreed as 

a result of a meet and confer between the relevant parties. Each party will provide, as appropriate, 

informal discovery consistent with Section III of the ESI Checklist for each electronic source of 

documents and information. 

2. Proposed Search Terms: Within twenty-one (21) days of the Parties’ agreement or 

a Court order regarding a Search Terms Protocol, or as otherwise agreed as a result of a meet and 

confer between the relevant parties, each Responding Party shall provide to the Requesting Party a 

list of proposed search terms to run against the custodians and locations as determined in 

accordance with paragraph (B)(1), above. For Responding Parties with foreign language 

documents, the list that the Responding Party will provide to the Requesting Party will identify the 

foreign languages contained in the documents, and include both English and foreign language 

search terms, as appropriate. The Responding Party agrees that, with respect to any search terms 

agreed to by the relevant parties or ordered by the Court in accordance with this Search Protocol, it 

will apply both the English and applicable foreign language terms to the documents subject to 

search under this Protocol. 

3. Additional Terms: If the Requesting Party objects to the sufficiency of the 

Responding Party’s proposed search terms, within thirty (30) days after service of the Responding 

Party’s list of proposed search terms, the Requesting Party may propose modifications to the 

Responding Party’s terms or a list of additional terms, with the combination of modifications and 

additional terms being no more than 125 in total, subject to the paragraph regarding Additional 

Terms for Good Cause below. 

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[PROP.] SEARCH TERM PROTOCOL – No. 13-MD-02420 

YGR (DMR) 

4. Application of Agreed Terms: Each Responding Party will proceed with the 

application of (i) its own proposed search terms and (ii) the search terms from the Requesting 

Party’s proposed search term list to which the Responding Party does not object (“Agreed Terms”). 

The results of these searches will then be reviewed for responsiveness and privilege, and for 

necessary redactions. 

5. Disputed Search Terms: To the extent that a Responding Party believes that any of 

the remaining search terms (the “Disputed Terms”) proposed by a Requesting Party are 

unreasonably overbroad and/or will result in the identification of disproportionate numbers of 

irrelevant documents, the Responding Party will identify: 

(i) the aggregate hits for each of the Disputed Terms (i.e. the number of documents 

returned by a search term); 

(ii) the number of unique hits for each of the Disputed Terms (the number of documents 

which contain the a particular search term, but no other); 

(iii) the total number of documents returned by the Agreed Terms; 

(iv) the total number of documents being searched for the Disputed Terms; and 

(v) the nature and type of irrelevant documents that the search term is returning. 

With respect to any search term for which the Responding Party believes that there exists a 

modification that will reduce the number of irrelevant documents returned by the search term, the 

Responding Party will meet and confer with the Requesting Party to discuss in good faith any such 

modification. For any terms that a Responding Party believes are burdensome, overly broad, and/or 

objectionable and for which there does not appear to be any modification that would resolve such 

issues, the Responding Party will meet and confer with the Requesting Party to discuss in good 

faith its objections to such search terms. As part of that process, the Responding Party will not 

refuse to provide the Requesting Party with the quantitative information discussed above. 

6. Qualitative Sampling Information Regarding Disputed Terms: In the event that 

the a parties are unable following good faith efforts to resolve any dispute after exhausting the 

Disputed Search Terms procedures set forth in Paragraph 5 above, the Requesting Party may 

request that random sampling be done with respect to no more than five (5) of the Disputed Terms. 

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[PROP.] SEARCH TERM PROTOCOL – No. 13-MD-02420 

YGR (DMR) 

The random sampling shall be done formally, by means of a random number generator, which will 

generate a statistically valid number of ordinal positions of the identified documents. A sample 

will consist of 100 plus 0.5 percent of the number of identified documents (100 + .0.5(number of 

hits)), with a total ceiling of 2,500 sample documents per defendant family. Defendants may 

review the random qualitative sample and remove any irrelevant document(s) from the sample for 

any reason, and remove any privileged document(s), provided that they replace the document(s) 

with an equal number of randomly generated document(s). Irrelevant documents in the sample 

shall be used only for the purpose of resolving disputes regarding search terms in this action, and 

for no other purpose in this litigation or in any other litigation; those irrelevant documents, as well 

as any attorney notes regarding the sample, shall be destroyed within fourteen days of resolution of 

the search term dispute, with such destruction confirmed in an affidavit by counsel. Access to the 

random sample shall be limited to one attorney from each law firm designated co-lead class 

counsel for Direct Purchaser Plaintiffs and Indirect Purchaser Plaintiffs, or an attorney designated 

by a co-lead firm (for a total of six attorneys). Each set of co-lead counsel (Direct Purchaser 

Plaintiffs and Indirect Purchaser Plaintiffs, separately) may also be assisted by translators for any 

foreign language documents, but no more than one translator for each foreign language. Plaintiffs 

may invoke the random sampling process with respect to no more than five search terms per 

defendant group. The randomly selected documents can be viewed by the Requesting Party 

immediately after the appropriate review by the Responding Party. 

7. Presentation to the Court: If, after engaging in the process described above, there 

still remain search terms about which the Parties cannot reach agreement, the Parties agree to 

submit a joint discovery letter to the Court explaining their respective positions with respect to 

such search terms. 

8. Additional Terms for Good Cause: Once a search term list is finalized (either 

though agreement of the parties or Order of the Magistrate Judge) and all iterative searches for a 

custodian are complete, the Requesting Party may propose additional search terms for a 

Responding Party to consider, but the Responding Party will have no obligation to re-search the 

custodian’s electronic data using different or additional search terms without agreement or a court 

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[PROP.] SEARCH TERM PROTOCOL – No. 13-MD-02420 

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order. The Requesting Party must show good cause for any additional proposed search terms, such 

as for example, that the information was unknown to them as of the time of the original list (e.g.,

the use of a code name that was not apparent from the grand jury production). If a Responding 

Party cannot meet any applicable deadlines for the production of documents as a result of this 

provision, the parties will negotiate in good faith a reasonable timeline for production or seek an 

order from the Court. 

IT IS SO ORDERED. 

DATED: ________________ 

MAGISTRATE JUDGE DONNA M. RYU 

UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE 

March 12, 2015

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORN

I

A

IT IS SO ORDERED

Judge Donna M. Ryu

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