ORDER – No. 17-cv-00561-WHO (LB)

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United States District Court

Northern District of California

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

San Francisco Division

SYNOPSYS, INC.,

Plaintiff,

v.

UBIQUITI NETWORKS, INC., et al.,

Defendants.

Case No. 17-cv-00561-WHO (LB)

ORDER ADJUDICATING DISCOVERY 

DISPUTE REGARDING SYNOPSYS’S 

REDACTIONS OF DOCUMENT 

PRODUCTIONS

Re: ECF No. 171

INTRODUCTION

This litigation centers around allegations by the plaintiff Synopsys, Inc. that the defendants 

(collectively, “Ubiquiti”) used counterfeit license keys to “pirate” Synopsys software, i.e., to 

install and use Synopsys software on their computers without a valid license. The parties have 

raised a discovery dispute regarding Synopsys’s redactions of documents it has produced to 

Ubiquiti in discovery, including redactions of the identities of Synopsys’s customers.

1

The court 

can adjudicate this dispute without a hearing, N.D. Cal. Civ. L.R. 7-1(b), and rules as follows.

 

1

Joint Letter Br. – ECF No. 171. Citations refer to material in the Electronic Case File (“ECF”); 

pinpoint citations are to the ECF-generated page numbers at the top of documents.
ORDER – No. 17-cv-00561-WHO (LB) 2

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STATEMENT

The parties agree that one method for calculating damages in a copyright case such as this one

is to look to “hypothetical-license damages,” i.e., “the amount a willing buyer would have been 

reasonably required to pay a willing seller at the time of the infringement for the actual use made 

by the infringer of the plaintiff’s work.” Oracle Corp. v. SAP AG, 765 F.3d 1081, 1087 (9th Cir. 

2014) (internal brackets omitted) (quoting Wall Data Inc. v. L.A. Cty. Sheriff’s Dep’t, 447 F.3d 

769, 786 (9th Cir. 2006)).2The parties agree that information about what other customers paid to 

license Synopsys’s software is therefore relevant.

Synopsys states that it has produced documents that show, on a customer-by-customer basis,

what its customers have paid to license its software.3Synopsys has redacted its customers’ names 

and identities from these documents.

4

For some documents, Synopsys has provided numerical 

aliases for each customer.5For other documents, Synopsys has redacted customer names with the 

message “REDACTED – NON-PARTY INFORMATION,” without any additional identifiers.6

Ubiquiti argues that this makes it “impossible to determine which documents or portions of 

documents relate to the same entities. For example, it is impossible to map information about 

apparent audits and settlements to the applicable agreements or to understand which slides in a 

presentation regarding supposed infringers relate to summary information regarding estimated 

settlement values.”7

Ubiquiti argues that Synopsys should produce documents that refer to its customers 

unredacted, so that it can see the customers’ identities.8Synopsys argues that the “[p]urchase and 

licensing term details — not customer names — are what matter to a proper copyright market 

 

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See Joint Letter Br. – ECF No. 171 at 3 (Ubiquiti section), 5 (Synopsys section).

3

Id. at 5.

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Id. at 1, 5.

5

Id. at 5.

6

See, e.g., Guo Supp. Decl. Ex. C – ECF No. 164-3 (under seal).

7

Joint Letter Br. – ECF No. 171 at 3 (citations omitted).

8

Id. at 1–3.
ORDER – No. 17-cv-00561-WHO (LB) 3

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United States District Court

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value analysis” and that its customers’ identities are not relevant to Ubiquiti’s defenses.

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Synopsys 

also argues that its agreements with its customers require it to provide its customers with notice 

and a reasonable opportunity to contest disclosure, and that the burden of notifying thousands of 

customers and providing them with an opportunity to contest disclosure outweighs the benefits to 

Ubiquiti of having its customers’ identities.

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Ubiquiti argues that in addition to customer information, Synopsys has also redacted internal 

documents and emails that do not relate to its customers but instead relate to third parties such as 

other alleged “software pirates,” to whom Synopsys does not owe notice or confidentiality 

obligations.11 Synopsys responds that those parties’ identities are not relevant to Ubiquiti’s 

defenses.12

Ubiquiti also claims that Synopsys’s redaction process has corrupted the formatting and 

metadata of certain of its document productions.13 Synopsys does not respond substantively on 

this point but states that the issue is not ripe for court intervention and that the parties should meet 

and confer on the issue.14

Synopsys represents that it has “offered to identify specific customers by numerical aliases if 

Defendants want to know which customer a particular redacted document is referring to.”

15

 

9

Id. at 5–6.

10 Id. Ubiquiti argues that Synopsys has entered into agreements with at least some customers that do 

not require Synopsys to provide notice before disclosing the customers’ identities, citing four 

settlement agreements that Synopsys entered with certain parties. Id. at 2–3 (citing Guo Decl. Ex. D –

ECF No. 148-4 (under seal); Guo Decl. Ex. E – ECF No. 148-5 (under seal); Guo Decl. Ex. F – ECF 

No. 148-6 (under seal); Guo Decl. Ex. G – ECF No. 148-7 (under seal)). Synopsys responds that even 

if some settlement agreements do not require it to provide notice, those settlement agreements are 

accompanied by license and purchase agreements, which do require Synopsys to provide notice. Id. at 

5; Uriarte Decl. Ex. 1 – ECF No. 175-3 (under seal); Uriarte Decl. Ex 2. – ECF No. 175-4 (under seal).

11 Joint Letter Br. – ECF No. 171 at 4.

12 Id. at 4–5.

13 Id. at 2.

14 Id. at 4.

15 Id. at 5.
ORDER – No. 17-cv-00561-WHO (LB) 4

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ANALYSIS

For those customers to whom Synopsys owes a duty to provide notice and a reasonable 

opportunity to contest disclosure, the court declines at this juncture to order Synopsys to unredact 

and produce en masse all of the customer-identity information it has redacted. Ubiquiti has the 

financial terms of those customers’ licensing arrangements, and the added benefit to Ubiquiti of 

obtaining those customers’ identities is outweighed by the burden on Synopsys on having to 

provide notice to those customers (and the burden on the court, if those customers file motions to 

contest disclosure). Synopsys’s alternative proposal of identifying customers by numerical aliases

seems reasonable. Identifying customers by numerical aliases (that are consistent across 

documents) would alleviate the burden of Synopsys having to notify customers about disclosure, 

on the one hand, while allowing Ubiquiti to track what documents or portions of documents relate 

to the same customer, on the other. If Ubiquiti finds that it has a need for the identity of some 

specific customer or customers, it can raise that issue (first with Synopsys through the meet-andconfer process and then, if necessary, with the court), but the court declines to impose a global 

unredaction requirement now.

The issue of third parties who are not customers (e.g., other “major pirates” that Synopsys was 

investigating) presents a closer question. Synopsys does not have the same providing-notice issues 

with respect to disclosing those third parties’ identities. On the other hand, Ubiquiti has not 

demonstrated why those third parties’ identities are relevant to any claims or defenses in this case. 

The court declines at this juncture to order Synopsys to unredact and produce en masse all of those 

third parties’ identities. At least as an initial matter, Synopsys may identify those third parties by 

numerical aliases.

The court sounds a note of caution. The court’s adoption of Synopsys’s numerical-alias 

proposal is contingent on Synopsys’s providing this numerical-alias information promptly and 

without undue burden to Ubiquiti. It would not be fair to adopt this process and relieve Synopsys
ORDER – No. 17-cv-00561-WHO (LB) 5

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of its burden of providing notice to its customers by imposing a greater burden on Ubiquiti.16 The 

parties should meet and confer to discuss a process for numerical-alias identification whereby 

Synopsys will provide Ubiquiti with numerical aliases promptly and without undue burden on 

Ubiquiti. Should Synopsys prove unwilling or unable to do so, the court may reconsider whether 

ordering Synopsys to produce its customer and third-party information unredacted is appropriate.

Finally, with respect to the issue of Synopsys’s redaction process allegedly corrupting the 

formatting and metadata of certain of its document productions, if there are legitimate issues to 

discuss, the parties should meet and confer to discuss them. But the meet-and-confer process must 

not serve as a delay or an excuse for Synopsys to not promptly correct (apparently) purely 

technical issues with its productions. The court is confident that Synopsys will promptly address 

any issues in its redaction process and reproduce, with intact formatting and metadata, any 

documents that were previously corrupted.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: April 5, 2018

______________________________________

LAUREL BEELER

United States Magistrate Judge

 

16 For example, it appears that Synopsys might have proposed that Ubiquiti identify on a document-bydocument basis which documents contain customer information that Ubiquiti wants identified, after 

which Synopsys would provide numerical aliases only for the references in those specific documents.

Joint Letter Br. – ECF No. 171 at 5. Such a process would not be fair to Ubiquiti. That is of course not 

to say that Ubiquiti should sit back and do nothing while demanding that Synopsys do all the work to 

identify documents with relevant customer information either. As the court has said many times over 

the course of the parties’ numerous discovery disputes, both sides have an obligation to negotiate in 

good faith and cooperate in discovery.