“Retroactively redacting unpersuasive arguments and information is akin to revising history.”

Flickr Creative Commons phote by Simon Scott

If you consider the way St. Jude Medical and Biosense go at one another for their sales employees, a cynic might be tempted to quip that their greatest relative competitive advantages are not so much their products, their medical devices (and accompanying intellectual property, support services, etc.) as their respective sales forces.

This week, U.S. District Court Judge Ann D. Montgomery issued a fairly strongly worded order denying St. Jude’s motion to redact a hearing transcript in the case.

The proposed redactions primarily relate to arguments made by Defendants regarding the purpose of de Castro’s term of years agreement with St. Jude….St. Jude’s redactions do not target sales figures, salaries, technical data, or other information that might actually confer an advantage to Defendants or other market competitors.

In other words, it would appear that the confidential information that St. Jude was particularly concerned with related to the terms and the reasons for its terms in employment agreements and not anything to do with their medical devices, their profits, and the like.

Grist for the cynic’s mill…