FEDERAL COURTHOUSE, Aug 26 – Weeks after
Inner City Press moved to intervene in a trade secrets and
copyright dispute over robotics products, arguing that
YouTube screenshots of a defendant's own public videos
couldn't plausibly remain confidential once they were, by
definition, already public, SEI Robotics Co., Ltd.
has conceded the point entirely, and what's now public
shows why the fight over sealing was never a side issue.
In a response filed August 18, SEI
Robotics states plainly: "Plaintiff no longer seeks to
maintain Exhibit A under seal." The exhibit consists of
screenshots from two YouTube videos posted by defendant
Ferdi Yıldırım through his channel "PC Teknik Elektronik"
— reviews and comparisons of Homatics-branded Android TV
streaming boxes, titled (in Turkish) "Homatics' New 2027
Devices" and "Homatics Box 4K Pro VS Homatics Box 4K Plus
V3." SEI's complaint had characterized this material as
revealing the company's "unreleased product information,
product images, renderings, and other materials."
Yıldırım's own DMCA counter-notification,
also now unsealed, tells a substantially different story.
Under penalty of perjury, he states that the images at
issue are "standard product marketing materials intended
for public promotion," already "widely available and used
across official and third-party industry platforms," and
cites a specific competing tech-review site, Android TV
Guide, showing the identical product images.
More strikingly, he alleges the takedown
itself was not about protecting trade secrets at all: "The
complainant (Homatics/SEI Robotics) is not seeking to
protect intellectual property; they are attempting to
suppress evidence of unprofessional conduct and
mismanagement within their official Telegram support
group. This strike is a retaliatory act aimed at silencing
a consumer who provided years of volunteer support." He
describes himself as a longtime volunteer moderator of the
brand's own community support channel, now suing to
reinstate a video he says was removed in retaliation for
criticizing the company internally.
None of that was visible while Exhibit A
remained sealed. SEI's complaint offered only its own
characterization — unreleased, confidential, trade-secret
product designs, exposed without authorization. The
unsealed record now lets the public weigh that account
against the defendant's sworn, and quite different,
version: publicly available marketing images, a
consumer-retaliation dispute, and a company using
copyright process to police criticism inside its own
support community. Whichever account the Court ultimately
credits, only one of them could be evaluated by anyone
outside the case while Exhibit A stayed sealed.
SEI also abandoned its bid to fully seal
two other exhibits — its own DMCA takedown notice and
Yıldırım's counter-notification (Exhibit D, now public in
full, is the source of the account above) — agreeing to
file public, redacted versions instead, preserving only
genuinely confidential material. That shift traces
directly to Judge Rita F. Lin's August 4 order, which
observed that portions of a third exhibit "may not need to
be sealed" and directed SEI to either redact it or show
cause why full sealing was warranted — the same posture
Judge Lin's own Standing Order takes toward overbroad
sealing requests generally.
The case remains pending on the merits. But
the record the public can now actually see is a markedly
different one than SEI's sealed filings alone would have
shown. Watch this site.
