Smartflash LLC v. USPTO (D.D.C.) — granting the agency’s summary judgment motion and upholding its application of Exemption 5 and the deliberative-process privilege to six emails concerning the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s use of “expanded panels”; concluding the communications at issue were pre-decisional and deliberative since they reflected “communications by subordinate employees . . . discussing how to interpret and respond to a prior FOIA request,” and contained “preliminary impressions, analysis, questions, and recommendations”; holding further that the agency conducted an adequate segregability review and demonstrate foreseeable harm in potential “chilling effect” on the FOIA office’s processing of requests; finally, rejecting the requester’s waiver arguments based on either adoption or public disclosure as unwarranted.

Informed Consent Action Network v. FDA (D.D.C) — granting, in part, the agency’s Open America stay motion; noting, among other things, how “FDA received two court orders [in the past three years] that together compelled it to produce approximately 5.7 million pages of COVID-19 vaccine records within a highly compressed timeframe,” and that these production orders have negatively impacted the processing of other requests; rejecting the agency’s proposal for an eighteen-month stay, and instead staying the case for eight months.

Summaries of all published opinions issued in 2024 are available here. Earlier opinions are available here.