A protective order was issued on behalf of Symantec Corp to limit Brown Bag's in-house counsel from accessing any trade secrets divulged in discovery.

[1] Symantec claimed that access to these trade secrets, which included source code, developmental plans, and beta tester information, were an undue burden.

The Court reviewed the records and found that the magistrate had performed comprehensive hearing with both parties before issuing the protective order.

[1] From an affidavit written by computer expert Ronald Ogg, the district court identified five groups of features that Brown Bag thought was infringing their copyright: The Court ruled that the first four groups of features are either unprotectable by copyright law as they were ideas or concepts essential to general outliners, or not substantially similar between the two programs.

[3] The Court rejected Brown Bag's contention, noting that extrinsic tests have expanded to utilize analytical dissection "as a tool for comparing not only ideas but also expression.

The intrinsic tests were performed only after filtering out unprotectable elements and made no use of analytical dissection and expert testimony.

The Ninth Circuit established that analytical dissection could be used for substantial similarity of expression of user interfaces and carefully worded their opinion such that it applies to all subject matters.