The High Court has refused Bayer Intellectual Property GmbH’s applications to keep documents from an Irish patent trial confidential and to redact parts of the judgment and trial transcript. Mr Justice Rory Mulcahy ruled on 22 September 2025 that Bayer had not established a clear, pressing need for the protections it sought.
The applications followed a ruling, delivered to the parties on 25 June, that Irish patent EP (I) 1 845 961 was invalid for obviousness. That earlier judgment had not been published generally because of an interim confidentiality order made during the trial. Sandoz AG and Rowex Limited, the parties challenging the patent, opposed Bayer’s applications.
Bayer sought five redactions to the judgment, redactions to almost all transcript references to 19 documents, and continued confidential treatment for 25 documents used in the trial. It accepted that six of the 31 confidential documents referred to in expert material or cross-examination should no longer be treated as confidential, and that parts of one other document were not confidential.
The judge said the constitutional requirement that justice be administered in public was the governing framework. Without an applicable statutory provision, a departure from open justice required compelling reasons, including a clear interest and a pressing need for protection. The court considered the English and Welsh cases cited by the parties instructive but said their rules could not be directly applied in Ireland.
Bayer argued that the documents revealed confidential internal drug-development processes and could harm its commercial interests. The judge found that its supporting affidavit made general assertions and did not identify with particularity what information in the documents warranted protection or how disclosure would cause harm. He also noted that Bayer had publicly discussed the drug’s development in journal articles, and that trial experts said the process shown in the documents was consistent with their expectations for how such a drug would be developed.
The judge rejected Bayer’s argument that Sandoz had used the discovery documents in a way Bayer had not anticipated. He said the court had treated them as Bayer understood they would be used. He also clarified that his earlier finding was that the documents gave a limited picture of what happened during development, making their relevance quite limited; he had not found that they were of very limited significance. They featured in detailed trial evidence and argument, he said, and the public was entitled to understand the reasons for the court’s decision.
All three strands of Bayer’s application were refused. Pending any appeal, however, the judgment is to be published with Bayer’s proposed redactions, and the interim order protecting the transcripts and other documents is to remain in place. The judge expressed the provisional view that Sandoz was entitled to the costs reasonably incurred in opposing the application, while allowing either party to seek a different costs order or address the terms of the final order.