Trading Techs., Int’l, Inc. v. BGC Partners, Inc., No. 10 C 715 (Consolidated Cases), Slip Op. (N.D. Ill. Apr. 22, 2011) (Schenkier, Mag. J.).

Judge Schenkier ruled upon various proposed modifications to the 2006 Protective Order in the twelve consolidated 2010 cases. Judge Moran entered the governing protective in 2005, and it has stood since with some revisions. The key rulings included:

The Court denied various proposals to limit plaintiff Trading Technologies’ ("TT") in-house counsel Steve Borsand’s access to technical documents. While there was some risk of inadvertent disclosure because Borsand is involved in strategic decisions as to the scope of patent protection, the risk was small compared to the harm TT would suffer if it lost Borsand, who had been active in these litigations since 2003.

The Court denied efforts to expand the scope of the patent prosecution bar, limiting counsel from prosecuting related patents for a year after the litigation ended. Defendants’ proposed expansion would have limited counsel from prosecuting in completely unrelated areas of trading software technologies. And the current bar balanced protecting the parties against the livelihood of counsel well.

The Court denied to add an additional level of protection for source code or to add additional protections for source code. The Court characterized the proposed protections as "elaborate," "extensive" and "labyrinthian."

The Court held that co-defendants should produce their confidential information to each other. To do otherwise, would limit the value of the case consolidation. And it was unnecessary to limit production because the Protective Order provided sufficient protections for the co-defendants just as it did for information exchanged between TT and a defendant.

Parties were allowed to add additional in-house counsel to the Protective Order, so long as they met the same criteria that Borsand met for TT.

The Court modified the Protective Order to include a specific method for challenging confidentiality designations made pursuant to the Protective Order.