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Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Sedona Conference®?
The Sedona Conference® (TSC) is a charitable, 501(c)(3) non-partisan research and educational institute dedicated to the advancement of law and policy in the areas of antitrust law, complex litigation and intellectual property rights. It is supported by registrations, meeting fees, sponsorships and other donations. TSC is a Minnesota nonprofit corporation with its principal place of business in Phoenix, AZ, and a satellite office in Sedona, AZ.
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Why does The Sedona Conference® concentrate on antitrust law, intellectual property rights and complex litigation?
Innovation drives our economy. Antitrust laws regulate our economy. Without a way to resolve complex litigation within the context of Rule 1 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure the judicial system's ability to provide even the appearance of justice and fairness in these critical areas is called into question.
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What is the vision of The Sedona Conference®?
The Sedona Conference® believes that the combined knowledge of experts representing varied viewpoints, focused through the "magic" of dialogue outside an adversarial setting, can achieve critically important consensus on the most difficult issues. TSC brings together the brightest minds in a think-tank setting with the goal of creating practical solutions and recommendations. Their findings are developed and enhanced through a substantive peer review process and the resulting content widely published in conjunction with educational programs for the bench and bar, so that it can swiftly drive the reasoned and just advancement of law and policy in the areas under study.
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How does The Sedona Conference® achieve its mission?
Every year TSC puts on a "regular season" of restricted attendance conferences in the three areas of its study. The conferences are dialogue-based, mini-sabbaticals for the nation's leading jurists, lawyers, and experts that allow them to examine cutting edge issues of law and policy. They feature a faculty of fifteen judges, lawyers and experts, and are limited to 45 additional participants, to ensure an intimate environment for meaningful dialogue. The conferences serve as incubators to identify "tipping points" in the law that may benefit from the creation of a Working Group for in-depth focus. When appropriate, a Working Group is formed that includes as many viewpoints and areas of expertise as possible to develop best practices, guidelines, or principles that may be of practical and immediate benefit to the bench and bar, and all other participants in the legal system.
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How does one become a member of a Working Group?
TSC develops the initial "core" of each Working Group by invitation to ensure the proper balance and representation of varied viewpoints and backgrounds needed to fully explore the assigned mission of the Group. The Working Group's formation and work plan are then posted on the TSC website. Any interested person can become a member of a Working Group by filling out the website application. Members are granted access to the Working Group's members-only section of the website, which includes early access to draft work product for review and comment. In addition, members have the opportunity to volunteer for special projects and drafting teams, and are invited to annual or semi-annual meetings (limited attendance).
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What have Working Groups achieved so far in contributing to the advancement of law and policy?
Working Group 1 was formed in the Summer of 2002 and issued a public comment version of The Sedona Principles addressing electronic document production in March of 2003 - a month later, the Principles were cited by the Federal Judicial Center's Civil Rules Advisory Committee Discovery Subcommittee as one of the reasons to focus on possible amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in this area. A month later it was cited by the Southern District of New York in the first of many opinions in the now seminal Zubulake case. Subsequently, it was cited by the District of Kansas as "persuasive authority" where no guidance existed in either the rules or the case law to help resolve the dispute before the court on the discovery of various data in connection with electronic spreadsheets. Williams v. Sprint/United Management Co., 2005 WL 2401626 (D. Kan. Sept. 29, 2005). Since then, WG1 has published the Second Edition of The Sedona Principles (June, 2007), and a number of Commentaries of immediate benefit to the Bench and Bar, including: The Sedona Conference® Commentary on Legal Holds, The Sedona Conference® Commentary on Best Practices for Search and Information Retrieval, The Sedona Conference® Commentary on Email Management and Archiving, the Second Edition of Best Practices for Navigating the eDiscovery Vendor Selection Process, the Third Edition of The Sedona Conference® Glossary, an updated version of the Legal Holds Commentary and a commentary on Proportionality. Additional commentaries are currently being developed addressing 1) social media; 2) structured data; 3) cloud computing; 4) cooperation guidance & resources for the bench and bar, and; 5) discovery 2.0.
Working Group 2 on Protective Orders, Confidentiality and Public Access issued its public comment report on best practices in May of 2005. The report was the subject of a series of Town Hall meetings held in Newark, Dallas, Denver and Birmingham to gather feedback before the group reconvened in April 2006 to work on the "final" product, which was published in early 2007. This work product has already been discussed at various judicial education programs around the country, and will be the focus of webinars and programs to be presented by The Sedona Conference® Institute in the future.
Working Group 3 developed a commentary on the role of economics in antitrust that was released for public comment in August of 2005, and was the subject of extensive dialogue at the fall 2005 antitrust conference. The group finalized this commentary in 2006. The commentary was presented to the Civil Rules Advisory Committee Discovery Sub-Committee on the issue of disclosure of expert reports in 2007, and will be the subject of various webinars in the future.
Working Group 4 is developing a paper on the intersection of the patent and antitrust laws. The goal is to create guidelines to help courts resolve disputes in this important area of the law. Extensive dialogue about the initial draft work product was conducted at the fall 2005 antitrust conference, the 2006 patent conference, and during subsequent meetings of the Working Group. This Working Group is moving towards completing its public comment draft this year.
Working Group 5 has developed a set of recommended best practices for Markman hearings and claim construction in patent litigation, and issued a public comment version of its recommendations in June 2006. It will soon be finished with the public comment phase and finalizing its work product this year.
Working Group 6 is an international effort addressing issues that arise in the context of e-information management and e-disclosure for multinationals subject to litigation and regulatory oversight in multiple jurisdictions with potentially conflicting internal laws. The first meeting was in Cambridge, England in the summer of 2005. The Working Group immediately began working on an International Survey, a resource library, and international judicial education programs. A second meeting was held in September 2006 in Madrid, its third annual meeting was in December 2007 in Hamilton, Bermuda, where the International Survey and Cross-Borders Conflicts papers were further disused, and its fourth annual meeting was held in Barcelona in 2009. The Cross-Borders Conflicts paper was published in 2008, and the International Survey was published in 2009 in both a static and a wiki format. The Group is currently working on a practical "solutions" paper; a draft of which was the subject of its fifth annual meeting held in September in Washington, DC, in connection with The Second Annual Sedona Conference International Programme on Cross-Border Discovery & Data Privacy.
Working Group 7 is an all-Canadian group developing e-disclosure principles and information management guidelines for Canada. The first meeting was held in Quebec in May, 2006 and included members of the judiciary and private and government bar from six provinces, as well as observers from the United States bench and bar. The public comment version of The Sedona Canada Principles was published both in Sedona Canada and French in 2007. Following a second meeting in Alberta, the final version of the Sedona Canada Principles was completed and was published in early 2008. WG7 is currently working on four, focused commentaries following its annual meeting in Vancover in 2009; the first of which, a commentary on proportionality in electronical discovery in Canada, was published for public comment this fall.
Working Group 8 has a core group that is addressing the issues surrounding punitive damages in mass tort litigation. The Steering Committee includes an active federal judge and a retired state judge, both experienced in complex civil litigation and mass torts. A public comment draft of the Working Group's study and recommendations will be developed over the next year, and membership in the Group will be open to the general public in early 2011.
Working Group 9 is dedicated to the issue of patent damages and remedies, and providing some practical guidance and harmonization of current case law in an area that is critical to those involved in patent litigation. A core group has been formed and a public comment draft is expected to be released within a year. Membership will be open to the general public in early 2011.
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What is unique about Working Group output?
Working Group output is the result of a dialogue-based process that seeks consensus from all interested viewpoints on a particular issue. Where consensus can be reached, principles are created. Where consensus cannot be reached, guidelines or best practices are created on how to address and/or address the issue(s) under consideration. The created product undergoes a period of public-comment and peer review for approximately 6-12 months. Following this aspect of the peer review process, the original drafting team reviews the comments and work product and incorporates appropriate changes and edits into a "final" document. The Working Group concept also offers an ongoing process to stay current with the changing environment. For example, Working Group 1's efforts, including The Sedona Principles, entered a second generation with an updated edition of The Sedona Principles released in 2007 containing extensive commentary relating the Principles to the 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
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How is The Sedona Conference® different from other nonprofit organizations that seek to advance law and policy, such as the ABA or ALI?
The Sedona Conference® has been referred to as an "ALI-ABA on steroids." But we are very targeted regarding the issues within our mission that we decide to tackle. Working Group efforts are launched only on those issues identified during our conferences that can lead to practical, immediately usable content in areas extremely important in the real world. We do not focus our Working groups on restatements, or analyses of entire areas of the law. Instead, we create content that can help address "crisis areas" or bottlenecks in the development of the common law.
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