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by 0cf8612b2e1e 624 days ago
Were it to go to trial, legal discovery would be fun. How many internal conversations were had about, “Those jerks at WPEngine are eating our lunch”. Rather than, “I am truly concerned about how the trademark is being confused by this one specific successful company. Whatever can we do?”
2 comments
otterley 624 days ago
Civil discovery isn’t a public process. The parties don’t get to share what they discovered with the public, and sensitive information is frequently redacted before documents are provided to the opposing party.
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skissane 624 days ago
> The parties don’t get to share what they discovered with the public,

Not directly, but they can enter it as evidence into the lawsuit, in which case it gets publicly released unless the other side can convince the judge to seal it. Absolutely parties try to get embarrassing information exposed to the media in this way. They only can do that if it is plausibly relevant to the subject matter of the lawsuit-but internal conversations in which executives are attacking the company suing them very likely are.

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otterley 624 days ago
> in which case it gets publicly released unless the other side can convince the judge to seal it.

Motions to seal evidence are routinely granted by courts in civil matters. Parties can try to get embarrassing information entered into the public record, but they have to convince a judge, and that’s often an uphill battle. Courts don’t like to be used as a tool for private parties to air the others’ dirty laundry.

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FireBeyond 624 days ago
> The parties don’t get to share what they discovered with the public

Well certainly.

> and sensitive information is frequently redacted before documents are provided to the opposing party.

In this case that kind of sensitive information absolutely wouldn't be able to be redacted (successfully) because those conversations would be entirely germane.

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0cf8612b2e1e 624 days ago
I was more thinking that this would be government intervention regarding the non-profit status. Discovery would still be secret, but probably a smoking gun there that the organization is not independent of the commercial entity.

As far as I am aware, the WP.org”s (or is it the foundation?) actions are distasteful, but they are allowed to ban whomever they like.

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ttul 624 days ago
I kind of want discovery to happen in this situation.
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