Court Opinion

ID: 9458597
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:56:37.614436+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:49.476606
License: Public Domain

SUPPLEMENTAL OPINION ON PETITION FOR REHEARING
FAHY, Senior Circuit Judge.
In his petition for rehearing, appellant suggests that this court mistakenly relied upon American Mail Line, Ltd. v. Gulick, 133 U.S.App.D.C. 382, 411 F.2d 696 (1969), to support the position that if an agency has failed to comply with 5 U.S.C. § 552(a) (2) to make available its final opinions, and its orders, a party seeking these documents by litigation must comply with the “identifiable” request requirement of 5 U.S.C. § 552(a) (3). Upon further consideration I agree. At the same time I think Guliek does not support appellant’s request. The opinion in Guliek sets forth separately the views of the three judges who decided the case. Two of the judges concurred in holding that the single memorandum there requested under the Freedom of Information Act should be made available as an identified document under Section 552 (a) (3) of the Act. The third judge thought the case was moot, and that in any event the memorandum in the circumstances should be made available quite independently of the Freedom of Information Act. It does not appear that the majority concurred in any views as to the Freedom of Information Act except that the memorandum was an identified record and should be made available as such.
Turning in the present case to the Act itself rather than to Gulick, we agree that the opinions and orders referred to in Section 552(a) (2), when properly requested, are required to be made available, and that such requirement is judicially enforceable without further identification under Section 552 (a) (3), even though the agency has failed to make’ them available as required by Section 552(a) (2).* It is implicit in that section, however, that the opinions and orders there referred to are identifiable. The language “identifiable records” appears only in Section 552(a) (3), but this is simply because the final opinions and the orders referred to in Section 552(a) (2), to be made available under published rules, are of course identifiable. For reasons stated in our opinion of June 15, 1972, the present request for “all unpublished manuscript decisions” is not a request for identifiable records considered as made either under Section 552(a) (2) or Section 552(a) (3). Nor is it a request for final opinions, or orders. We accordingly remain of the view that the action of Judge Gasch, considered solely as a grant of the appellee’s motion to dismiss, as appellant contends it should be considered, was justified. As the judge pointed out, the request is too broad. It is broader than the statutory limits of Section 552(a) (2).
The District Court did not hold, nor do we, that the manuscript decisions of the Patent Office are exempt, as such, from disclosure. But when a request for them is made in such general terms as here, involving a large and indefinite number of records which have accumulated over the entire history of this agen*615cy, the agency and the court are entitled to scrutinize the request more carefully for compliance with the Act than in the usual ease, illustrated by those which have heretofore been decided by the courts.
Even assuming that “all unpublished manuscript decisions” requested were final opinions, or orders, those that are not part of pending patent applications are now public records, made so under published rules of the Patent Office, 37 C.F.R. § 1.11 (1972), and those that are part of pending applications are required to be kept confidential under 35 U.S.C. § 122 (1970). The former are dispersed, however, among millions of Patent Office files. I do not think the Patent Office was required to reorganize these files in response to appellant’s request in the form in which it was made. Nor do I think Congress intended such a result. Cf. H.R.Rep.No.1497, 89th Cong., 2d Sess. 8 (1966), 1966 U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News, p. 2418; S.Rep. No.813, 89th Cong., 1st Sess. 7 (1965). There do reside in the record, however, unresolved facts indicative of the existence of compilations of manuscript decisions which may be duplicates of those in the files. Insofar as appellant may make a properly framed request for these, under either Section 552(a) (2) or (a) (3), the District Court no doubt will allow exploration of the facts on our remand for its consideration of the still pending request of appellant for indices. It would seem contrary to the spirit of Section 552(a) (2), which contemplates the availability of final opinions, and orders, made in the adjudication of cases, for an agency to make available for public inspection and copying its final opinions and its orders only in a marginally useful form (i. e., dispersed through millions of public files) and at the same time maintain only for intra-agency use duplicates of the same records in some convenient, compiled and indexed form. In the developments on remand with respect to the indices, it may be that sufficient light will be shed upon the problem to enable a request for the manuscript decisions to be made in a manner which brings it within the Act. In camera inspection by the court of the indices and contents of volumes of manuscript decisions which the record indicates may exist, is not precluded, to aid the court in passing upon the issue of disclosure and the related issue of exemptions. With the cooperation of the parties in preserving whatever non-disclosure the exemptions authorize, while at the same time seeking compliance with the purpose of the Act to inform the public as to the manner in which public agencies perform their functions, a satisfactory solution hopefully can be achieved on the remand.
The petition for rehearing is denied.
MaeKINNON and ROBB, Circuit Judges, concur in the views above expressed and in denial of the petition for rehearing.

 See the opinion of Judge Tamm in Gulick, 133 U.S.App.D.C. at 387, 411 F.2d at 701.