“… trials are conducted on the basis of the principle of natural justice. There are a number of strands to this. A party has a right to know the case against him and evidence on which it is based. He is entitled to have the opportunity to respond to any such evidence and to any submissions made by the other side. The other side may not advance contentions or adduce evidence of which he is kept in ignorance.”
“Similarly, where the whole object of the proceedings is to protect a commercial interest, full disclosure may not be possible if it would render the proceedings futile. This problem occurs in intellectual property proceedings. It is commonplace to deal with the issue of disclosure by establishing ‘confidentiality rings’ of persons who may see certain confidential material which is withheld from one or more of the parties to the litigation at least in its initial stages. Such claims by their very nature raise special problems which requireexceptional solutions.”
“Even so, if the action were to go to trial, it would seem that sooner or later the party would be bound to learn the facts, unintelligible though they might be to him, unless the very exceptional course were taken of excluding him from part of the hearing. Even where the information is of a kind the significance of which the party would himself be able to understand, it may nevertheless be just to exclude him, at any rate during the interlocutory stages of the action, from knowing it if he is a trade competitor of his opponent.”
“Each case has to be decided on its own facts and the broad principle must be that the court has the task of deciding how justice can be achieved taking into account the rights and needs of the parties. The object to be achieved is that the applicant should have as full a degree of disclosure as will be consistent with adequate protection of the secret. In so doing, the court will be careful not to expose a party to any unnecessary risk of its trade secrets leaking to or being used by competitors. What is necessary or unnecessary will depend upon the nature of the secret, the position of the parties and the extent of the disclosure ordered. However, it would be exceptional to prevent a party from access to information which would play a substantial part in the case as such would mean that the party would be unable to hear a substantial part of the case, would be unable to understand the reasons for the advice given to him and, in some cases, the reasons for the judgment. Thus what disclosure is necessary entails not only practical matters arising in the conduct of the case but also the general position that a party should know the case he has to meet, should hear matters given in evidence and understand the reasons for the judgment.”
“…nevertheless, I have thought it appropriate to order that measure of disclosure in order to dispel any suspicion that IPCom may have that there is helpful material there, and to allow their expert the opportunity of making good what at the moment I regard as rather speculative statements that there is assistance to be gained from an examination of licences of this kind.”
“i) The case is still at the interim stage. It is still not clear what part if any the documents will play in the case. There is no guarantee it will go to trial, as the negotiations between IPCom and Nokia show. To allow inspection by the key commercial people within IPCom could inflict wholly unnecessary harm on HTC, Nokia and the interested parties.”
“The legal representatives were privy to details which they were not able to share with their clients. This is obviously not a desirable state of affairs but it had allowed the case to proceed in a practical manner.”