Hytera Communications seeks an order allowing it to file under seal its motion to dismiss the government’s criminal indictment for failure to present evidence of trade secrets to the grand jury. Hytera filed its motion Thursday (docket 1:20-cr-00688) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago. A grand jury in May 2021 returned indictments listing 22 counts of trade secret theft against the company and seven of its engineers who developed digital mobile radios for Motorola in Malaysia beginning in 2004 (see 2301260060). The engineers quit Motorola in 2008 and 2009 to go to work for Hytera in Shenzhen, and the government alleges they took Motorola’s DMR trade secrets with them when they left. Hytera’s motion to dismiss contains citations to and excerpts of transcripts of the secret grand jury proceedings held in fall 2020 and spring 2021, plus grand jury exhibits that have been designated as sealed under the court’s Feb. 28 protective order, said the motion to file under seal. Under that protective order, five business days after service of unredacted copies of the motion to dismiss, Hytera will file the redacted papers publicly, unless it receives an application in opposition from another party within those five business days, it said.

Despite “diligent efforts” to serve two Mexican robocall defendants through the Mexican Central Authority under the Hague Convention, Marriott International “has been unable to confirm service,” said the company’s memorandum Friday (docket 1:21-cv-00610) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia in Alexandria in support of its motion for service by publication and email. Marriott filed suit in May 2021 against multiple defendants alleging unauthorized use of the its trademark in international robocall scams and asserting claims of trademark counterfeiting, trademark infringement, false designation of origin and false advertising under the Lanham Act (see 2210070013). To promote prompt service of the Mexican defendants under the Hague Convention, Marriott paid its translation and service vendor to request status updates from the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs at “regular intervals,” said the memorandum. The company also hired Mexican counsel, and that counsel “agreed to serve as Marriott’s representative before the Mexican district courts to further facilitate completion of Hague service,” it said. That counsel “contacted each court to ensure that service attempts were made in a timely fashion,” it said. Before filing its motion, Marriott “pressed” the ministry “for a status update on service but received no assurances,” said the memorandum. The company is unable to confirm Hague service on the Mexican defendants “for various reasons,” it said. On occasion, the ministry responded that an address for the Mexican defendants was either incorrect or that the individuals at the location claimed that another business operates there, it said. When the ministry deemed that multiple addresses were incorrect, Marriott confirmed that it had obtained those service addresses from corporate records the Mexican defendants filed with the Mexican government, which Marriott secured from a vendor, it said. The company worries that the Mexican defendants are running a “shell game,” it said. “Marriott understands that a frequent method of attempting to avoid service of process in Mexico is to claim that multiple businesses operate at an address,” it said. When process arrives for one entity, the occupants “present a license for another business purportedly operating at that location without disclosing that the named entity also operates there,” it said. To avoid further efforts “that are likely to result in the same inconclusive results,” Marriott files this motion for alternate service, said the memorandum.

Gray Media and KSDK St. Louis seek a protective order under Rule 26(c) “to protect the confidentiality of certain documents and information that may be produced by the parties to this action,” plus that of third parties, said their joint motion Thursday (docket 4:23-cv-01163) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Missouri in St. Louis. Gray Media alleges that KSDK (Channel 5) infringed its First Alert Weather trademark (see 2309180002), but the station denies the allegations (see 2311030050). Under the proposed protective order, a non-designating party or parties may challenge the confidentiality designation of a document “under a procedure that first involves the parties informally discussing the designation and then raising the issue” with the court, said the joint motion. The party seeking the confidentiality designation will have the burden “to establish the document’s confidential designation,” it said. By protecting the confidentiality of documents and information designated as confidential, the proposed protective order “will promote the interests of the parties and any third party producing discovery in this case,” it said. The motion won’t “prejudice any party to the case,” it said.

The New York Times Co.’s copyright infringement lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI (see 2312270044) was assigned Tuesday to U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein for Southern New York in Manhattan, said a text-only docket entry (docket 1:23-cv-11195). Stein presided over the suit brought in the fall against OpenAI by the Authors Guild and 17 authors (docket 1:23-cv-08292), including John Grisham and Scott Turow (see 2312060054). The suit was amended later to include Microsoft. Stein received the newspaper's suit after the judge deemed the two cases related, said a separate docket entry Tuesday. Both cases allege that OpenAI and Microsoft copied the rights owners’ protected works to train their large language models as generative AI tools, and did so without compensating the rights owners or seeking their consent.