Back in November the District Court issued several rulings regarding the ProV1 litigation (click HERE to refresh your memory). Well since then Acushnet has appealed several rulings to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), and as you know the CAFC let the injunction stand.

Well this week I was surprised to get an email that new documents had been filed with the District Court. What could it be? So, I do a little poking around and see that the new documents were filed by an attorney for Bridgestone. Yes, for a moment I thought I was looking at the docket for the wrong case. Nope, it was the right case.

Click HERE
to read the couple of sentences of the letter that have not been redacted and click HERE to see the couple portions of a November court ruling that were redacted. Interesting right?

So what was it that was redacted from the ruling? Well, since the Bridgestone waited over two months from the date that the ruling was issued it should be no surprise that hundreds, if not thousands, of people have viewed and downloaded the original documents. Therefore, you can click HERE and scroll down to pages 30 and 31 to see what Bridgestone wanted the Court to remove from the Court’s Memorandum.

Interesting and odd. Apparently Bridgestone doesn’t want the public to know that they licensed USPN’s 5779562 and 6368237 from Acushnet. Probably has something to do with some confidentiality provisions of the licensing agreement, but it still leaves me scratching my head. Afterall, there were plenty of press releases concerning the Bridgestone settlement saying Bridgestone did cross-license some of Acushnet's patents.

David Dawsey  – The IP Golf Guy