[PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

________________________

No. 12-16488

________________________

D.C. Docket No. 1:09-cv-00955-TWT

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION, 

Plaintiff - Counter Defendant - Appellee,

versus

ABBVIE PRODUCTS LLC, 

Defendant - Appellant. 

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Georgia

________________________

(March 21, 2013)

Before MARCUS, BLACK and SILER,* Circuit Judges.

MARCUS, Circuit Judge:

Several years ago, Appellee Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) began 

investigating a settlement between Appellant AbbVie Products LLC, then known 

 * Honorable Eugene E. Siler, Jr., United States Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit, sitting by 

designation.

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 1 of 33 
2

as Solvay Pharmaceuticals (“Solvay”), and several other pharmaceutical 

companies. The settlement, the FTC believed, violated the antitrust laws because

the companies effectively had colluded to preserve the monopoly profits from 

Solvay’s highly lucrative patent on AndroGel, a topical testosterone gel. During 

the course of the investigation, Solvay voluntarily disclosed a confidential 

document called the Project Tulip Financial Analysis (“Tulip FA”), which 

projected AndroGel’s profits and also discussed the appropriate terms of, and 

benefits from, a settlement between Solvay and its competitors. The FTC filed an 

antitrust suit against Solvay and the other pharmaceutical companies based on the 

settlement and attached the Tulip FA as the sole exhibit to its complaint.

In 2010, Solvay convinced a district court judge in the Northern District of 

Georgia to issue a protective order sealing the Tulip FA because the document 

contained sensitive financial information that could be harmful to Solvay’s 

business interests. The district court eventually dismissed the FTC’s suit, and a 

panel of this Court affirmed. FTC v. Watson Pharm., Inc., 677 F.3d 1298 (11th Cir. 

2012). In 2012, however, the Supreme Court issued a writ of certiorari to review 

this Court’s decision in Watson, and the FTC returned to the district court and 

asked for the Tulip FA to be unsealed so that the FTC and its amici could discuss 

the document openly in the Supreme Court. The district court did so, based in large 

part on its finding that the harms Solvay would suffer from the Tulip FA’s being 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 2 of 33 
3

made public have been reduced in the intervening three years. Solvay appeals the 

district court’s decision to modify the earlier protective order and unseal the Tulip 

FA. Because we conclude that the district court did not abuse its considerable 

discretion to modify its own protective order, we affirm.

I.

A.

Solvay Pharmaceuticals, which was later acquired by Abbott Laboratories 

and subsequently renamed AbbVie Products LLC, had a license to sell a topical 

testosterone gel called AndroGel. Watson, 677 F.3d at 1304. AndroGel was 

protected by a patent that expired in 2020, and therefore Solvay had a monopoly on 

its sale, which resulted in more than $1.8 billion in revenue. However, a threat to 

this very lucrative business emerged; two other drug manufacturers, Watson 

Pharmaceuticals and Paddock Laboratories, developed generic versions of 

AndroGel and sought FDA approval to begin selling those products. Id.

To defend its patent, Solvay filed a patent infringement lawsuit against 

Watson and Paddock. Par Pharmaceuticals became involved in the lawsuit by 

sharing the costs of litigation with Paddock in exchange for a share of the potential 

profits. Id. Faced with the possibility that its patent would be invalidated, and the 

generic entrants allowed into the market, Solvay opted to settle with Watson and 

Par/Paddock. The settlement agreement featured a so-called “reverse payment,” in 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 3 of 33 
4

which Solvay paid Watson and Par/Paddock to delay marketing their generic 

versions of AndroGel until 2015. Id. at 1305. The upshot of the settlement was that 

Solvay got to keep its monopoly until 2015, with the reverse payments to its 

potential competitors effectively giving them a share of the monopoly profits.

The FTC has contested the legality of reverse payments for some time, 

claiming that “they closely resemble the sorts of horizontal agreements to suppress 

competition that have previously been condemned under the antitrust laws” and 

“[n]othing in the Patent Act legitimizes the use of reverse payments.” Brief for 

Pet’r at 15-16, FTC v. Actavis, 133 S. Ct. 787 (No. 12-416). Upon learning of 

Solvay’s settlement, the FTC began investigating the matter and ultimately filed an 

antitrust lawsuit against Solvay, Watson, Par, and Paddock, which was transferred 

to the Northern District of Georgia. Watson, 677 F.3d at 1305. During its 

investigation, the FTC asked Solvay to divulge confidential documents regarding 

the settlement of the patent litigation and the development, marketing, and sale of 

AndroGel. The FTC’s written request stated that “[i]nformation submitted in 

response to this letter will be afforded confidential treatment and is exempt from 

disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, as provided in 16 C.F.R. 

§§ 4.10-4.11 and 15 U.S.C. §§ 46(f) and 57b-2(f), respectively.” Solvay 

cooperated with the investigation.

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 4 of 33 
5

In particular, Solvay produced the Tulip FA, an April 2006 document that 

contained revenue and profit projections for the AndroGel product line along with 

recommendations for how to settle the patent infringement suit between Solvay 

and its competitors. The Tulip FA was created by a Solvay financial analyst, Elaine

Yang, to assist Solvay’s management during settlement negotiations with Watson 

and Paddock.

B.

In the underlying antitrust action, the FTC sought to attach the Tulip FA to 

its second amended complaint and filed the document under temporary seal to give 

Solvay an opportunity to seek a protective order from the district court sealing the 

document.

1 Solvay promptly moved for a protective order sealing the Tulip FA, 

which the district court granted in February 2010. Specifically, the district court 

found that Solvay “ha[d] shown good cause for sealing indefinitely [the Tulip FA] 

which contains sensitive and confidential information.”

During this time, Solvay sought to dismiss the complaint because, as a 

matter of law, Eleventh Circuit precedent established that anticompetitive behavior 

within the “scope of the patent” was not a violation of the antitrust laws. Prior to 

sealing the exhibit, the district court dismissed the complaint on this basis, In re 

 1 Pursuant to 15 U.S.C. § 57b-2 and 16 C.F.R. § 4.10, the FTC may disclose documents received 

during an investigation in judicial proceedings, provided that the FTC gives the submitter notice 

and an opportunity to seek a protective order from the court.

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 5 of 33 
6

AndroGel Antitrust Litig., 687 F. Supp. 2d 1371, 1378-79 (N.D. Ga. 2010), and a 

panel of this Court affirmed, Watson, 677 F.3d 1298. The panel in Watson based 

its decision largely on prior precedent, which “establish[ed] the rule that, absent 

sham litigation or fraud in obtaining the patent, a reverse payment settlement is 

immune from antitrust attack so long as its anticompetitive effects fall within the

scope of the exclusionary potential of the patent.” Id. at 1312. The FTC sought 

Supreme Court review, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari in the case on 

December 7, 2012. FTC v. Actavis, Inc., 133 S. Ct. 787 (2012). The question 

presented in that case is whether reverse-payment agreements, such as the one 

between Solvay and its competitors, are per se lawful unless the underlying patent 

litigation was a sham or the patent was obtained by fraud, or instead are 

presumptively anticompetitive and unlawful. See Pet’n for Writ of Certiorari at I, 

Actavis, 133 S. Ct. 787 (No. 12-416). The parties submitted the Tulip FA to the 

Supreme Court in a sealed volume of the parties’ Joint Appendix.

Shortly after the grant of certiorari, the FTC moved the district court to 

unseal the Tulip FA, claiming that both the FTC and its amici wished to discuss the 

document’s contents in the Supreme Court, and that the public interest supported 

unsealing the document. The FTC submitted evidence that, since Solvay’s 

acquisition by Abbott, the company had disclosed information regarding the 

volume of AndroGel sales and had also introduced a new version of the product, 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 6 of 33 
7

AndroGel 1.62%, which was different than the AndroGel 1% product discussed in 

the Tulip FA.

Solvay opposed the motion and argued that the Tulip FA would allow both 

competitors and counterparties to reverse-engineer Solvay’s profit margins, which 

would give them an advantage in product pricing and rebate negotiations. Solvay 

also disputed the FTC’s need for the document to be public and argued that it had 

produced the document in reliance on the FTC’s promises of confidential 

treatment. As for the proper test to apply, Solvay argued that “[t]he party seeking 

modification of a protective order bears the burden of demonstrating good cause 

for the modification, particularly where, as here, good cause was shown for entry 

of the original protective order.”

The FTC responded by introducing additional evidence, including testimony 

from the Tulip FA’s author, Yang. Yang testified that she could not reverseengineer Solvay’s profit margins using the Tulip FA alone. In addition, the FTC 

presented testimony from Solvay’s then-CEO, Laurence J. Downey, who said that 

the costs of producing AndroGel had changed in the months following the Tulip 

FA’s creation. Finally, the FTC argued that Solvay had no valid reliance claim 

because Solvay could not have reasonably expected that the document would not 

be disclosed in a judicial proceeding.

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 7 of 33 
8

After oral argument, the district court immediately granted the motion to 

modify its protective order and unseal the Tulip FA but granted Solvay’s motion to 

stay the unsealing until Solvay had a chance to appeal. The court later issued a 

brief written order embodying its decision. In relevant part, the court found:

a. There is a presumption that documents relevant to legal decisions 

are public.

b. The Supreme Court granted certiorari in this case on December 7, 

2012. It is in the public interest for the parties to be able to discuss in 

their briefing and in oral arguments to the Supreme Court the details 

of the economic and financial projections in Exhibit A. The FTC may, 

for example, highlight the document as an illustration of its view that 

agreements like those at issue in this case are anticompetitive and in 

violation of the antitrust laws. The defendants, on the other hand, may 

want to show, should they choose to make the argument, the power 

that patent exclusivity gives them. This interest extends not just to the 

parties, but also to any amici, who should have access to the document 

and be able to discuss it openly in their briefing.

c. The sensitivity of the information and the potential for competitive 

injury to Solvay if the information is disclosed has been reduced, 

although not eliminated, with the passage of time. The Court takes 

very seriously Solvay’s concerns, particularly about the effect of 

disclosure on competitors’ pricing and on rebate negotiations, but the 

passage of time has reduced the likelihood of serious injury to Solvay 

in either of those areas.

d. The weight to be given to the public’s interest in knowing why 

decision-makers have made the decisions that they have made, or will 

make, has changed since the Court’s earlier orders sealing the 

document.

e. The public interest in making this record public outweighs the 

private interests of Solvay in its confidential information.

The district court granted Solvay a stay until January 2, 2013, to appeal.

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 8 of 33 
9

On December 26, 2012, Solvay filed an emergency motion for expedited 

briefing and consideration or an extension of stay pending appeal. A panel of this 

Court granted a temporary stay to rule on the motion and, on January 10, 2013, 

granted Solvay a stay pending this appeal and expedited the case.

II.

District courts are in a superior position to decide whether to enter or modify 

protective orders, and it is well established that “the decision as to access is one 

best left to the sound discretion of the trial court . . . .” Nixon v. Warner 

Commc’ns, Inc., 435 U.S. 589, 599 (1978); accord Pub. Citizen v. Liggett Grp., 

Inc., 858 F.2d 775, 790 (1st Cir. 1988) (“Control of pretrial discovery, including 

the entry or modification of a protective order, is a matter falling peculiarly within 

the discretion of the district court.”); In re Agent Orange Prod. Liab. Litig., 821 

F.2d 139, 147 (2d Cir. 1987) (“Whether to lift or modify a protective order is a 

decision committed to the sound discretion of the trial court.”).

Thus, we review a district court’s order lifting or modifying a protective 

order and unsealing a document only for abuse of discretion. McCarthy v. Barnett 

Bank of Polk Cnty., 876 F.2d 89, 91 (11th Cir. 1989). “A district court abuses its 

discretion if it applies an incorrect legal standard, applies the law in an 

unreasonable or incorrect manner, follows improper procedures in making a 

determination, or makes findings of fact that are clearly erroneous,” Thomas v. 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 9 of 33 
10

Blue Cross & Blue Shield Ass’n, 594 F.3d 814, 821 (11th Cir. 2010) (internal 

quotation marks omitted), and also “when it misconstrues its proper role, ignores 

or misunderstands the relevant evidence, and bases its decision upon 

considerations having little factual support.’” Jove Eng’g, Inc. v. IRS, 92 F.3d 

1539, 1546 (11th Cir. 1996) (quoting Arlook v. S. Lichtenberg & Co., 952 F.2d 

367, 374 (11th Cir. 1992)).

Solvay identifies several errors in the district court’s decision that, according 

to Solvay, each qualifies as an abuse of discretion. First, Solvay claims that the 

district court erred as a matter of law by treating the Tulip FA as a judicial record

to which the strong presumption of public access applies, because neither the 

district court nor this Court relied at all on the Tulip FA in dismissing or affirming 

the dismissal of the underlying antitrust case. Second, Solvay says that the district 

court erred as a matter of law by failing to apply the right standard to the motion. 

According to Solvay, the court should have modified its order only if the FTC 

demonstrated “extraordinary circumstances,” not merely good cause. The 

combination of the first two errors led the district court to presume the document 

should have been unsealed rather than placing a heavy burden on the FTC to show 

why the document should be unsealed. Third, Solvay argues that the district court 

abused its discretion by failing to consider Solvay’s reliance on the protective 

order. Finally, Solvay insists that, under either the extraordinary-circumstances or 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 10 of 33 
11

good-cause balancing test, the court abused its discretion by failing to find that the 

balance of equities favors maintaining the protective order. None of these 

arguments withstands close scrutiny.

A.

Solvay first disputes whether the Tulip FA, which was the sole exhibit 

attached to the FTC’s complaint, constitutes a judicial record subject to the 

common-law right of access. The common-law right of access “establish[es] a 

general presumption that criminal and civil actions should be conducted publicly” 

and “includes the right to inspect and copy public records and documents.” Chi.

Tribune Co. v. Bridgestone/Firestone, Inc., 263 F.3d 1304, 1311 (11th Cir. 2001)

(per curiam). It is “an essential component of our system of justice” and “is 

instrumental in securing the integrity of the process.” Id. However, “[t]he right to 

inspect and copy is not absolute, . . . and a judge’s exercise of discretion in 

deciding whether to release judicial records should be informed by a sensitive 

appreciation of the circumstances that led to the production of the particular 

document in question. . . . [T]he common-law right of access requires a balancing 

of competing interests.” Id. (internal quotation marks, alterations, and citation 

omitted).

“[W]hen applying the common-law right of access federal courts 

traditionally distinguish between those items which may properly be considered 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 11 of 33 
12

public or judicial records and those that may not; the . . . public presumptively 

ha[s] access to the former, but not to the latter.” Id. The test for whether a judicial 

record can be withheld from the public is a balancing test that weighs “the 

competing interests of the parties” to determine whether there is good cause to 

deny the public the right to access the document. Id. at 1312. Our case law lists 

several relevant factors to consider, including “whether the records are sought for 

such illegitimate purposes as to promote public scandal or gain unfair commercial 

advantage, [and] whether access is likely to promote public understanding of 

historically significant events.” Newman v. Graddick, 696 F.2d 796, 803 (11th Cir. 

1983).

Solvay does not contest that the FTC’s complaint itself is a judicial record, 

nor could it. A complaint, which initiates judicial proceedings, is the cornerstone of 

every case, the very architecture of the lawsuit, and access to the complaint is 

almost always necessary if the public is to understand a court’s decision. Indeed, 

the complaint is so fundamental to litigation that the plaintiff’s pleadings in the 

complaint determine whether a federal court has jurisdiction to even entertain the 

claim. See Louisville & Nashville R.R. Co. v. Mottley, 211 U.S. 149, 152-54 

(1908). Moreover, a large number of lawsuits -- including the underlying 

controversy between the FTC and Solvay that is currently before the Supreme 

Court -- are disposed of at the motion-to-dismiss stage, where a court determines 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 12 of 33 
13

solely on the basis of the complaint whether the plaintiff has made sufficient 

factual allegations to state a claim under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). See Bell Atl. 

Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555-56 (2007). For this reason, courts have 

consistently treated complaints as judicial records for purposes of determining 

whether the common-law right of access applies. See IDT Corp. v. eBay, --- F.3d -

---, 2013 WL 490751, at *2 (8th Cir. Feb. 11, 2013) (parties conceded “that the 

antitrust complaint in this case is a ‘judicial record’” consistent with the “modern 

trend in federal cases to treat pleadings in civil litigation (other than discovery 

motions and accompanying exhibits) as presumptively public”); Mann v. 

Boatright, 477 F.3d 1140, 1149 (10th Cir. 2007) (treating complaint as judicial 

record); United States v. Martin, 746 F.2d 964, 968 (3d Cir. 1984) (the commonlaw right of access encompasses “transcripts, evidence, pleadings, and other 

materials submitted by litigants” (internal quotation marks omitted)).

Our case law is consistent with this treatment of the complaint as a judicial 

record. In Chicago Tribune, we crafted the general rule “that material filed with 

discovery motions is not subject to the common-law right of access, whereas 

discovery material filed in connection with pretrial motions that require judicial 

resolution of the merits is subject to the common-law right.” 263 F.3d at 1312. The 

rationale for the distinction was that this “more refined approach” was necessary to 

account for “the unique function discovery serves in modern proceedings.” Id. As 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 13 of 33 
14

another court of appeals has explained, “it must be recognized that an abundance 

of statements and documents generated in federal litigation actually have little or 

no bearing on the exercise of Article III judicial power.” United States v. Amodeo, 

71 F.3d 1044, 1048 (2d Cir. 1995). The overwhelming majority of documents 

disclosed during discovery are likely irrelevant to the underlying issues and will 

not be “heard or read by counsel” or “by the court or other judicial officer.” Id.

Thus, we had ample reason in Chicago Tribune to exempt materials attached to 

discovery motions from the presumption of public access while retaining that 

presumption for materials that invoke “judicial resolution of the merits,” such as

complaints, motions to dismiss, or motions for summary judgment. See 263 F.3d at 

1312 & n.11.

If a complaint is a judicial record, then it follows that attached exhibits must 

also be treated as judicial records. Indeed, under the Federal Rules of Civil 

Procedure, “[a] copy of a written instrument that is an exhibit to a pleading is a part 

of the pleading for all purposes.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 10(c). At the motion-to-dismiss 

stage, we consider the facts derived from a complaint’s exhibits as part of the 

plaintiff’s basic factual averments. See Solis-Ramirez v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 758 

F.2d 1426, 1430 (11th Cir. 1985) (per curiam). We even treat specific facts 

demonstrated by exhibits as overriding more generalized or conclusory statements 

in the complaint itself. See Griffin Indus., Inc. v. Irvin, 496 F.3d 1189, 1206 (11th 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 14 of 33 
15

Cir. 2007) (“[W]hen the exhibits contradict the general and conclusory allegations 

of the pleading, the exhibits govern.” (citing Associated Builders, Inc. v. Ala. 

Power Co., 505 F.2d 97, 100 (5th Cir. 1974))). Thus, to the same extent that the 

FTC’s complaint is a judicial record, so too is the attached Tulip FA.

Solvay’s argument to the contrary is unavailing and misreads Chicago 

Tribune and Amodeo. According to Solvay, the fact that the district court and the 

panel of this Court in Watson did not rely on the Tulip FA or cite it in their 

decisions indicates that the public does not need to have access to the document to 

understand those decisions. Solvay places great weight on the fact that Chicago 

Tribune cites Amodeo in a footnote, see Chi. Tribune, 263 F.3d at 1312 n.11, and 

that Amodeo characterizes documents as falling along a “continuum” where “the 

weight to be given the presumption of access [is] governed by the role of the 

material at issue in the exercise of Article III judicial power and the resultant value 

of such information to those monitoring the federal courts.” 71 F.3d at 1049. But 

Chicago Tribune did not, by citing Amodeo, adopt an ad hoc standard that a 

document’s status as a judicial record is dependent upon whether it played a 

discernible role in the resolution of the case. The holding in Chicago Tribune

established a bright-line rule exempting discovery materials from the common-law 

right of access. 263 F.3d at 1312. This is a simple rule to apply and does not 

involve locating the exhibit on a continuum by determining the actual role the 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 15 of 33 
16

document played -- by, for instance, counting the number of times the district court 

cited it while deciding a motion to dismiss. Instead, we determine whether a 

document is a judicial record depending on the type of filing it accompanied. A 

complaint and its exhibits, which are integral to the “judicial resolution of the 

merits” of any action, are surely “subject to the common-law right.” Id.

In this case, the Tulip FA was not part of a discovery motion but rather was 

the sole exhibit appended to the FTC’s complaint, and therefore was a judicial 

record. The FTC’s complaint repeatedly referred to the exhibit in general terms, 

although the complaint could not (and did not) discuss the Tulip FA’s contents in 

detail due to the then-existing protective order. Thus, the district court was right to 

weigh the public’s interest in viewing the document against Solvay’s interest in it 

remaining confidential under the good-cause balancing test articulated in Chicago 

Tribune.

Solvay raises one final point on this issue. Even granting that exhibits 

attached to a complaint are ordinarily judicial records, Solvay asks us to draw a 

narrow exception for “confidential, previously sealed documents.” If the public 

could access confidential documents, Solvay claims, then plaintiffs could “exploit 

the public access doctrine by obtaining highly confidential commercial documents 

through pre-complaint investigations or discovery undertaken with assurances of 

confidentiality, attaching them as exhibits to pleadings, and then seeking to 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 16 of 33 
17

publicly reveal those documents” for the purpose of pressuring defendants to settle. 

But Solvay does not provide any precedent for this proposed exception, and, 

notably, the policy reasons Solvay advocates are purely speculative and not at all 

present in the circumstances of this case. The Tulip FA was the sole exhibit to the 

FTC’s amended complaint and had a direct bearing on the economic advantages 

that Solvay reaped by entering into a reverse-payment settlement. There is not the 

slightest indication in this record that the document’s inclusion was a tactic by the 

FTC, or that the document was included solely to coerce Solvay rather than to 

influence the judicial resolution of this case. Moreover, insofar as this potential for 

abuse does exist in other cases, there are already sufficient remedies to address it. 

Indeed, the Second Circuit raised this possibility in Amodeo and elaborated 

extensively upon those remedies: “professional sanctions may be available,” along 

with “[m]onetary sanctions . . . under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11,” or “[a]n 

action for wrongful civil proceedings.” 71 F.3d at 1049. And “a court can strike a 

pleading as scurrilous under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(f).” Id. Solvay 

does not explain why these protections would be insufficient in an appropriate 

case.

Thus, we can discern no abuse of discretion in the district court’s 

characterization of the Tulip FA, attached as an exhibit to the FTC’s complaint, as 

a judicial record.

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 17 of 33 
18

B.

Next, Solvay argues that the district court applied the wrong legal standard

anyway and that “the burden should have been on the FTC to show extraordinary 

circumstances justifying unsealing.” According to Solvay, because the motion had 

already been litigated, and the district court had already found good cause to seal 

the document, the FTC’s motion “was thus actually subject to the standards for a 

motion for reconsideration.” And movants for reconsideration must show 

“extraordinary circumstances justifying the reopening of a final judgment.” 

Gonzalez v. Crosby, 545 U.S. 524, 535 (2005) (internal quotation marks omitted);

see also SEC v. TheStreet.com, 273 F.3d 222, 229 (2d Cir. 2001); Martindell v. 

Int’l Tel. & Tel. Corp., 594 F.2d 291, 296 (2d Cir. 1979).

But Solvay waived this argument by not raising it in the district court and, 

indeed, invited the claimed error by affirmatively arguing before the district court 

for application of the good-cause balancing test rather than the extraordinarycircumstances test it now advocates. “This Court has repeatedly held that an issue 

not raised in the district court and raised for the first time in an appeal will not be 

considered by this court.” Access Now, Inc. v. Southwest Airlines, Inc., 385 F.3d 

1324, 1331 (11th Cir. 2004) (internal quotation marks omitted). “The reason for 

this prohibition is plain: as a court of appeals, we review claims of judicial error in 

the trial courts. If we were to regularly address questions . . . that district courts 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 18 of 33 
19

never had a chance to examine, we would not only waste our resources, but also 

deviate from the essential nature, purpose, and competence of an appellate court.” 

Id. While appellate review is especially inappropriate when the waived claim 

contains a factual component, see id., courts regularly find that appellants waived 

purely legal arguments as well -- including arguments regarding what standard 

should have applied to decide an issue before the district court. See, e.g., G & S 

Holdings, LLC v. Cont’l Cas. Co., 697 F.3d 534, 538 (7th Cir. 2012) (party waived 

its argument that a state, and not federal, pleading standard should have applied to 

a motion to dismiss by failing to make the argument in the district court); 

Cronquist v. City of Minneapolis, 237 F.3d 920, 924-25 (8th Cir. 2001).

The doctrine of invited error also applies here. “It is a cardinal rule of 

appellate review that a party may not challenge as error a ruling . . . invited by that 

party.” In re Carbon Dioxide Indus. Antitrust Litig., 229 F.3d 1321, 1327 (11th 

Cir. 2000) (internal quotation marks omitted); accord Pensacola Motor Sales, Inc. 

v. E. Shore Toyota, LLC, 684 F.3d 1211, 1231 (11th Cir. 2012) (“A party that 

invites an error cannot complain when its invitation is accepted.”). Or, as another 

court of appeals has put it, it is “waiver in the truest sense” when a party goes 

“beyond failing to raise a relevant argument” and in fact “affirmatively relie[s] on” 

a “standard that they now argue is erroneous.” G & S Holdings, 697 F.3d at 538.

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 19 of 33 
20

Solvay never argued for this heightened standard in the district court and in 

fact invited the very error for which it now faults the district court. Solvay claims 

its argument regarding the proper standard is to be found at pages 15 and 16 of its 

opposition to the FTC’s motion to unseal, but that section never cites the two 

Second Circuit cases, TheStreet.com or Martindell, or otherwise advances the 

notion that extraordinary circumstances should be the standard. Rather, Solvay’s 

opposition brief states that, “[t]he party seeking modification of a protective order 

bears the burden of demonstrating good cause for the modification, particularly 

where, as here, good cause was shown for entry of the original protective order.” 

The transcript of the oral argument on this motion similarly reveals no discussion 

of the applicable standard. Under these circumstances, we would not fault the 

district court for error, even if it had been error, that Solvay invited.2

Solvay’s unwaived argument is that the district court erred by placing the 

burden on Solvay, rather than on the FTC, to show good cause why the document 

should remain under seal. As Solvay puts it, “[n]owhere did the district court’s oral 

 2 To excuse its waiver, Solvay argues that we may consider a new argument on appeal if it 

involves a pure question of law and our refusal to consider it would result in a miscarriage of 

justice. Ramirez v. Sec’y, U.S. Dep’t of Transp., 686 F.3d 1239, 1250 (11th Cir. 2012)). While

“[i]t is not clear precisely how severe a potential miscarriage of justice must be to justify 

consideration of arguments not raised in the district court,” we generally find the necessary 

miscarriage of justice lacking when “the argument raised is weak on its merits.” Roofing & Sheet 

Metal Servs., Inc. v. La Quinta Motor Inns., Inc., 689 F.2d 982, 990 n.11 (11th Cir. 1982). In this 

case, the argument is unconvincing on the merits. It relies on out-of-Circuit authority that does 

not support Solvay’s position. As TheStreet.com makes clear, the extraordinary-circumstances 

test does not apply to documents that are judicial records. 273 F.3d at 230-31, 234.

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 20 of 33 
21

or written opinion suggest that the burden was on the FTC to justify modification. 

On the contrary, the district court balanced the interest in public disclosure against 

Solvay’s confidentiality interests under a presumption of public access, not a 

presumption that the protective order should be maintained.”

The proper standard for district courts to apply in these circumstances is

whether there was good cause to unseal the document. A party who has already 

shown good cause for sealing a document in the first instance should not bear the 

burden of showing good cause once again if the same opposing party seeks 

modification of the original protective order. Although Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(c) does 

not address which party bears the burden in these circumstances, courts regularly 

impose the burden on the party seeking modification. See Factory Mut. Ins. Co. v. 

Insteel Indus., Inc., 212 F.R.D. 301, 303 (M.D.N.C. 2002) (“If good cause were not 

required to be shown when the order was initially entered, the party who later 

seeks to prevent disclosure . . . bears the burden of showing good cause. If good 

cause were shown initially, however, the party seeking to modify the order must 

show good cause.” (citation omitted)); Bayer AG & Miles, Inc. v. Barr Labs., Inc., 

162 F.R.D. 456, 463-64 (S.D.N.Y. 1995); Jochims v. Isuzu Motors, Ltd., 145 

F.R.D. 499, 501 (S.D. Iowa 1992). Plainly, the FTC bore the burden of 

demonstrating good cause for unsealing the document.

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 21 of 33 
22

The district court’s order does not explicitly state that it placed the burden on 

the FTC. However, to hold that the district court abused its discretion, we must 

find that the district court either applied the wrong legal standard or used an 

improper procedure in deciding the motion. A fair reading of the district court’s 

order indicates that it did place the burden on the FTC and, therefore, did not 

commit an abuse of discretion.

To the extent that Solvay’s complaint is that the district court gave no weight 

to its prior protective order and treated this motion to modify as if the court was 

confronting the issue for the first time, we remain unconvinced. The district court’s 

order begins with the general proposition that “[t]here is a presumption that 

documents relevant to legal decisions are public.” Standing alone, this statement is 

not legally erroneous. The Tulip FA is a judicial record to which the presumption 

of public access ordinarily would apply. The order then goes on to conduct the 

good-cause balancing test that we laid out in Chicago Tribune. The district court 

described the public and FTC interests in the document in findings (b.) and (d.) of 

its order, Solvay’s interests in finding (c.), and concluded that “[t]he public interest 

in making this record public outweighs the privacy interests of Solvay in its 

confidential information.”

Crucially, the language of the order indicates that the district court did not 

reweigh the parties’ interests from scratch but in fact compared the strength of their 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 22 of 33 
23

interests relative to the time of its earlier order. Thus, for example, the order 

describes the FTC and its amici’s interest in “hav[ing] access to the document and 

be[ing] able to discuss it openly in their briefing” before the Supreme Court, and 

then states that “[t]he weight to be given to the public’s interest . . . has changed

since the Court’s earlier orders sealing the document.” Similarly, the district court 

did not weigh Solvay’s interests as if Solvay bore the burden; instead, the order 

stresses that “[t]he sensitivity of the information and the potential for competitive 

injury to Solvay . . . has been reduced, although not eliminated, with the passage of 

time.” The district court’s reasoning -- that “the passage of time has reduced the 

likelihood of serious injury to Solvay” -- explicitly compares Solvay’s current 

interests to its original good-cause showing.

Moreover, the contents of the briefs on this motion demonstrate that the 

burden was not placed on Solvay to prove that its interests remained as strong as 

they were when the original protective order was entered. Rather, the FTC 

submitted extensive new evidence regarding the changed circumstances that 

lessened the possibility of harm to Solvay’s business interests. In particular, the 

FTC showed that, since Solvay’s acquisition by Abbott, the company had disclosed 

AndroGel sales information and had introduced a new version of the product, 

AndroGel 1.62%. The FTC also introduced testimony from the Tulip FA’s author, 

Yang, who stated that she could not reverse-engineer Solvay’s profit margins using 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 23 of 33 
24

the Tulip FA alone. In addition, the FTC presented testimony from Solvay’s past 

CEO, who stated that some of the costs of producing AndroGel had changed after 

the Tulip FA was written.

Because the district court did not apply the wrong test or employ an 

improper procedure, it did not abuse its discretion in this respect.

C.

Solvay also finds fault in the district court’s silence regarding Solvay’s 

reliance on the protective order. Solvay claims that Chicago Tribune mandated that 

district courts consider reliance on a protective order before modifying it. “The 

district court here gave no indication . . . that it considered the importance of 

Solvay’s reliance on the previously issued protective order,” and that “failure alone 

constitutes an abuse of discretion.” We disagree.

Chicago Tribune did not hold that a district court abuses its discretion by not 

explicitly and specifically addressing reliance in every decision to modify a 

protective order. The panel’s main holding in Chicago Tribune was that “the 

district court must balance Firestone’s interest in keeping the information 

confidential against the Press’s contention that disclosure serves the public’s 

legitimate interest in health and safety.” 263 F.3d at 1314-15. In other words, what 

the panel held that the district court must do is to conduct the good-cause balancing 

test. The opinion faulted the district court because its order had stated that 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 24 of 33 
25

“concerns of public health and safety trump any right to shield such material from 

public scrutiny” but had “made no factual findings . . . that support[ed] the 

conclusion that the public’s health and safety [we]re sufficiently impacted by the 

information contained in these specific documents to trump Firestone’s interest in 

keeping trade secret information confidential.” Id. at 1315. Thus, the primary 

purpose of the remand was to make adequate factual findings regarding the public 

interest in that case. In a footnote at the end of this section, the panel also 

instructed the district court to discuss “Firestone’s reliance on the terms of the 

stipulated protective order.” Id. at 1315 n.15. This directive made sense in that

case, where “[a]t the beginning of the litigation, in what has become commonplace 

in the federal courts, the parties stipulated to a protective order allowing each other 

to designate particular documents as confidential and subject to protection under 

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c)(7).” Id. at 1307. This passage in Chicago 

Tribune suggests that discussion of reliance would be appropriate in cases 

involving reliance on a protective order in force when the document was disclosed.

However, that type of reliance is not at issue here. As the FTC accurately 

points out, Solvay could not have relied on a protective order to disclose the Tulip 

FA because Solvay disclosed the Tulip FA before it moved for and received the 

protective order. In Chicago Tribune, on the other hand, the protective order was 

entered prior to discovery and was in force during document production. In those 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 25 of 33 
26

circumstances, it made sense to say that Firestone relied on the protective order to 

disclose confidential information, and that the district court should have taken that 

reliance into account. Only after Solvay disclosed the Tulip FA, and the 

government attached the Tulip FA to its complaint, did Solvay move for a 

protective order sealing the document. In these circumstances it makes less sense 

to say that Solvay relied on the protective order. After all, Solvay could not have 

relied ex ante on a protective order to which it had no entitlement, and which it was 

uncertain of receiving as a matter of the district court’s discretion, when it 

disclosed the Tulip FA.

Perhaps recognizing this, Solvay places great emphasis on the government’s 

assurances of confidentiality. But the government did not promise complete 

confidentiality. The government only promised that “[i]nformation submitted in 

response to this letter will be afforded confidential treatment and is exempt from 

disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, as provided in 16 C.F.R. 

§§ 4.10-4.11 and 15 U.S.C. §§ 46(f) and 57b-2(f), respectively.” Title 15 U.S.C. 

§ 57b-2(d) provides that the FTC can disclose confidential information “in 

Commission adjudicative proceedings or in judicial proceedings to which the 

Commission is a party,” and 16 C.F.R. § 4.10(g) states that confidential 

information may be disclosed so long as, “[p]rior to disclosure . . . , the submitter 

will be afforded an opportunity to seek an appropriate protective or in camera 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 26 of 33 
27

order.” In other words, the FTC’s promise of confidentiality was that the 

information would remain confidential unless and until the FTC filed suit against 

Solvay, at which point Solvay would be entitled to seek a protective order. 

Notably, the FTC’s regulations do not guarantee that, if Solvay failed to obtain a 

protective order, the FTC would withdraw the confidential material. Thus, to the 

extent that Solvay relied on the FTC’s promise, the FTC effectively promised 

Solvay only the opportunity to apply for a protective order to seal the Tulip FA.

At all events, the briefs presented to the district court thoroughly addressed 

the question of reliance. The district court did not abuse its considerable discretion 

by not expressly discussing reliance in its decision.

D.

Lastly, Solvay claims that the district court “fail[ed] to recognize that the 

balance of equities weighs strongly in favor of keeping the [Tulip FA] under seal.” 

The district court’s conclusion that the equities favored unsealing the document, 

however, was merely the product of several antecedent factual findings. In order to 

conclude that the district court abused its discretion, therefore, we would have to 

overturn those factual findings as clearly erroneous.

The key findings that the district court made were that “[t]he sensitivity of 

the information and the potential for competitive injury to Solvay if the 

information is disclosed has been reduced, although not eliminated, with the 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 27 of 33 
28

passage of time,” and that, with regard to “the effect of disclosure on competitors’ 

pricing and on rebate negotiations, . . . the passage of time has reduced the 

likelihood of serious injury to Solvay in either of those areas.”

For us to conclude that those findings were clearly erroneous, we must be 

“left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed” after 

reviewing the evidence as a whole. Anderson v. City of Bessemer, 470 U.S. 564, 

573 (1985). But “[i]f the district court’s account of the evidence is plausible in 

light of the record viewed in its entirety, [we] may not reverse it even though 

convinced that had [we] been sitting as the trier of fact, [we] would have weighed 

the evidence differently.” Id. at 573-74. “Where there are two permissible views of 

the evidence, the factfinder’s choice between them cannot be clearly erroneous.” 

Id. at 574.

Solvay insists that the competitively sensitive data in the Tulip FA retains 

the potential to harm the company in its rebate negotiations and with regard to 

competitors’ pricing of their products. However, this is the quintessential case 

where there are two permissible views of the evidence, and therefore the district 

court’s finding that the likelihood of injury has been ameliorated over time cannot 

be clearly erroneous. The FTC came forward with substantial evidence that the 

Tulip FA would no longer be as damaging to Solvay. For instance, in the oral 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 28 of 33 
29

arguments and their briefs before the district court, the FTC pointed at the 

following pieces of evidence:

1. With regard to reverse-engineering profit, the analyst responsible for the 

Tulip FA, Elaine Yang, testified that the Tulip FA did not contain the 

financial assumptions for the financial models, only the results of those 

models;

2. According to Yang, the cost and revenue numbers, along with modeling 

assumptions, were contained in a backup spreadsheet that was not included 

with the Tulip FA;

3. To rely on the numbers in the Tulip FA, one would need to assume that the 

costs and profit projections had not changed in the intervening seven years;

4. Solvay has introduced a new product, AndroGel 1.62%, which does not 

necessarily have the same cost structure or profit margin as the original 

AndroGel product discussed in the Tulip FA;

5. With regard to profit margins, the profit margin of Abbott’s (Solvay’s 

parent) pharmaceutical business as a whole is public knowledge and is 76.5 

percent;

6. The Tulip FA does not include cost changes that have occurred in 

subsequent years; the then-U.S. CEO of Solvay testified during an 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 29 of 33 
30

investigational hearing that AndroGel’s costs had changed during a threemonth period.

On the other side of the ledger, Solvay produced a declaration from James Hynd, 

the current leader of the AndroGel unit, in which he stated that the profit on 

AndroGel sales has never been publicly disclosed, and thus that disclosure of the 

Tulip FA “would cause severe harm to [Solvay] if disclosed to the public.”

Neither side has a bulletproof case. The FTC’s strongest case is this: the 

process of reverse-engineering the profits from the Tulip FA requires financial 

assumptions not apparent on the face of the document itself. Moreover, the 

document is old and cannot speak to how the company’s costs have changed over 

time. In particular, Solvay has subsequently introduced a new AndroGel product 

that may have a different cost structure and thus a different profit margin than the 

former AndroGel product. And, in any case, we know the pharmaceutical unit’s 

overall profit margin. On the other hand, Solvay’s strongest case is that the Tulip 

FA contains a product-specific projection of profit that remains highly confidential 

information.

But there appear to be holes in both accounts. Some of the FTC’s inferences 

are unpersuasive. For instance, having the entire company’s profit margin -- 76.5 

percent in this case -- hardly tells us or the public the product-by-product 

breakdown of profits. As for Solvay’s account, the problem is that, even if one 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 30 of 33 
31

could calculate the per-unit profits from 2006, this figure would not necessarily aid 

competitors or counterparties in present-day negotiations. Public knowledge of 

AndroGel’s 2006 profit margin does not necessarily entail knowledge of 

AndroGel’s 2013 profit margin. Moreover, since costs can change and have 

changed in the past, it would be possible or even likely that the document’s 

projections no longer reflect the current profit and loss of the product.

As an example of one fact-bound dispute between the parties, the FTC 

argued that it had testimony from Solvay’s former CEO that AndroGel’s costs had 

changed in the months following the Tulip FA’s creation. In its reply, Solvay 

insists that this testimony reveals that its former CEO meant only that “costs 

changed directly in proportion to sales,” and that “costs chang[ing] in proportion to 

sales is precisely how margin percentages [i.e., profit] remain constant.” But the 

testimony can be read to support either side’s position.

The district court had two conflicting but viable accounts of the evidence, 

and we cannot now reweigh the evidence and reach our own independent 

conclusion. The district court chose to endorse the FTC’s view by concluding that 

the Tulip FA’s sensitivity has been reduced over time and that the likelihood of 

injury to Solvay has been lessened. These factual findings were not clearly 

erroneous. Having found those facts, the district court then did precisely what 

Chicago Tribune commanded it to do. The district court weighed the public’s 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 31 of 33 
32

interest in the document against Solvay’s weakened confidentiality interests and 

concluded that “[t]he public interest in making this record public outweighs the 

private interests of Solvay in its confidential information.”

The common-law right of access to federal courts is designed to promote 

public understanding of significant public events, including what a court does and 

how a court goes about adjudicating cases. Wilson v. Am. Motors Corp., 759 F.2d 

1568, 1570 (11th Cir. 1985) (per curiam) (“[A] common law right of access exists 

as to civil proceedings. ‘What transpires in the courtroom is public property.’” 

(quoting Craig v. Harney, 331 U.S. 367, 374 (1947)); Newman, 696 F.2d at 801 

(“[O]pen proceedings may be imperative if the public is to learn about the crucial 

legal issues that help shape modern society. Informed public opinion is critical to 

effective self-governance.”). The district court’s decision to unseal the Tulip FA 

enhanced the public’s ability to understand the judicial process and a significant

legal issue that will shape business practices in the future: whether the FTC is right 

that so-called reverse payments are anticompetitive and, therefore, violative of 

Section 1 of the Sherman Act. This issue inherently possesses public significance 

and has done so since the day this controversy first appeared in court.

The district court had, as we stressed earlier, broad discretion to modify the 

protective order that it entered three years ago. It found that the passage of time 

had altered the balance enough so that the value of public access to the Tulip FA 

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 32 of 33 
33

exceeded the value of confidentiality to Solvay. We find no abuse of the district 

court’s discretion in this case and affirm its decision to make the Tulip FA publicly 

accessible.

We also vacate the stay entered by a panel of this Court. Order Granting 

Stay Pending Appeal, FTC v. Abbvie Prods. LLC, No. 12-16488 (11th Cir. Jan. 10, 

2013).

AFFIRMED; STAY VACATED.

Case: 12-16488 Date Filed: 03/21/2013 Page: 33 of 33