Integral Dev. Corp. v. Tolat, C 12-06575 JSW (LB)
| Decision Date | 30 May 2013 |
| Docket Number | No. C 12-06575 JSW (LB),C 12-06575 JSW (LB) |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of California |
| Parties | INTEGRAL DEVELOPMENT CORP., Plaintiff, v. VIRAL TOLAT, Defendant. |
[Re: ECF No. 80]
The court previously issued an order about electronic copies of Integral's information that Mr. Tolat uploaded from Integral to his Dropbox account. See 4/22/13 Order, ECF No. 65 at 3-4. That order directed Mr. Tolat to return all confidential information to Integral, confirmed that he could not keep the information, and established procedures to verify that he no longer had the information (as he represented). Id. The procedures also included a forensic analysis of his hard drive to confirm whether and when he transferred any information.
The issue now is Integral's April 9, 2013 Rule 45 Subpoena to Dropbox for broad information beyond that contemplated in the previous joint letter brief and beyond that ordered by the court. 5/15/13 Joint Letter Brief, ECF No. 80. For example, it asks for all documents uploaded to, downloaded from, or accessed and viewed from Mr. Tolat's Dropbox from January 19, 2012 to the present, even though the court devised procedures to segregate out personal information. See4/22/13 Order, ECF No. 65, at 3-4. The court held a hearing on May 30, 2013 and orders the following new procedures.
The court's last discovery order was about forensic analysis of computer hardware to show what Mr. Tolat did or did not do with Integral's private information, and it also was about confirming that Mr. Tolat did not retain any sensitive information (while still protecting his private information and any information attributable to his new employer). The second point was all that was addressed in the court's order about the Dropbox account.
Integral's subpoena to Dropbox now is broader, and its relevance apparently is about showing what Mr. Tolat did and did not do with Integral information. The content it sought is broader than what is relevant (in that its "all documents" approach is not limited to Integral information). It also violates the court's approach to protecting private information. Integral also should have fronted the issue. Dropbox apparently is resisting providing content under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2703, although it will produce non-content information such as subscriber information. See Joint Letter Brief, ECF No. 80 at 6, and Ex. 7, ECF No. 8-7 at 5-6 (for subscriber viral.tolat@gmail.com). Integral's view is that this non-content information is all that is at issue now, and it reserves its option of moving to compel the content information from Dropbox. Joint Letter Brief, ECF No. 80 at 6.
At the hearing, the court asked defense counsel whether he objected to the production of the non-content information such as subscriber information, and he said that he did not object.
The court also discussed with the parties what Integral apparently wants to do, which is reconstruct a forensic evaluation of what Mr. Tolat did with Integral's private information and his Dropbox account. Possible things that could be revealed are what he uploaded (which is information that duplicates and confirms what Integral can see from its analysis of its own servers), what he downloaded to his personal computer (which is information that may be confirmed through the forensic analysis of the computer hard drive contemplated in the court's last order), and what was transferred to other computers (such as possibly a computer or storage media device affiliated with his new company). Intermingled with all of this are the privacy concerns (both Mr. Tolat'sand his new employer's) that the court tried to address in its previous order. There also is a burden articulated by Dropbox, the overbroad content of what Integral seeks, and the interplay with Mr. Tolat's own...
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