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Apple Fails Due Diligence in Trade Secret Case
Brett writes "Despite claims to the contrary, it now appears that Apple didn't do any serious investigation inside the
company before they sued AppleInsider and the PowerPage. This is quite a bit of a problem because Californian law and First Amendment precedent requires Apple check up on itself
before threatening journalists. From the article, "It appears that Apple has adopted a shoot-first, ask questions later approach to dealing with rumors sites. The company took no
depositions, required no oaths from its employees, and failed to subpoena anyone related to the company or the development of the device in question.""
Ummm...Oracle?
Win some, lose most of them...
I still don't get why people are so enamored with Apple. For every piece of FUD Microsoft spews, Apple tosses out a lawsuit.
People forget that Apple sued Microsoft to keep non Apple GUIS off the market. If they had their way, everything would be text mode or Apple. No Windows, no X, no nothing. The only up shot to this I can think of is we'd have been spared the silly KDE vs GNOME battles. OF course that's because if Apple had their way, neither would exist.
They're no better than Microsoft, SUN or even SCO, but because they're considered an underdog in the hardware and OS wars, shenanigans like this are given a free pass.
What gives?
We're talking about a company who took until version TEN to have a decent OS, and still ships their laptops with one frigging mouse button, even though they cram as much functionality into the alternate mouse buttons as any Windows developer.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
But does it make them any different from an ethical point of view? We trash MS a lot for tossing its weight around with trademarks and filing for silly patents, but here we have a direct competitor who blindly fires off an illegitimate lawsuit against free speech journalism. In essense, wasn't Apple just trying to throw its weight around as well just like MS would do?
Not to sound like a fanboy, but this what is attractive about Linux. There's no organization, good or bad, that I'm directly supporting by using it as my computer OS. Trust me, I think Tiger might be the best user-centric OS by miles, but Apple as the market leader would frighten me just as much as MS as the market leader and as such, I don't buy their products.
The summary is very conclusive that Apple failed to do something required by law. Though from TFA:
"The First Amendment requires that compelled disclosure from journalists be a last resort," said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "Apple must first investigate its own house before seeking to disturb the freedom of the press."
Is the only source of this information in the summary this quote from an attorney working against Apple? If so, something stated by an opposing attoreny in the middle of a case shouldn't be taken as settled fact.
I'm a big tall mofo.
The article is not based on any decision made by a judge, it is based on what the opposing lawyers say. It is not even based on the _opinion_ of the opposing lawyers (which they might be very wise to keep to themselves), but on their interpretation that is most helpful to their clients.
It would be interesting to see what Apple's lawyers think about it. Maybe, just maybe, they have a slightly different point of few. Maybe they don't quite agree that the victim of a crime has to shoulder all the cost and hardship of the investigation.
Here is a comprehensive summary of the case at EFF's site. The coverage has obvious bias, but informative nonetheless.
95% of all sigs are made up.
They don't wanna lose their jobs,
"Of fucking course I didn't tell Apple Insider anything".
The mole may not even have known about a deliberate leak, similar to earlier this morning reading about Yahoo mail updates - this was 1st posted:
I saw the new interface when my cousin, who works for yahoo was visiting
liqbase
Way to go Apple, you ass hats.
When the story first broke that apple was sueing rumor sites I withheld judgement, you see I run a review site, I understand the dynamics of the tech industry and the vital role of a journalist, I also understand the letters NDA, and what they mean to a company, and what they mean to me when I sign one. I do feel that as a journalist I have protections given to me by the US constitution protecting me and everyone for that matter from persecution and prosocution as a result of what I write.
That being said it also needs to be aknowlaged that there have to be some checks and balances in the system that allow companies to protect information that if released early could damage the company. We need to recognize that we do have great freedoms and powers in the press but that we need to make sure we use those powers and freedoms responsibly, for example not outing a CIA agent that isn't doing anything more then her job, that isn't say stealing from the Repbulican National Convention headquarters, but is making our country a safer place. You know that thing we refer to as common sense.
We as a society also need to infer and compel in to people that when they make a resonable agreement with someone be it a company or other individual or institution, they need to be held to that agreement, meaning if employee's of apple did disclose information about an upcomming product and had signed an NDA, and the upcomming product was not part of a large and publicly damaging scandal they had no right to reveal that information to a third party, and thusly the third party doesn't have the right (even under freedom of the press / speech) to reveal that information to the public.
What?
What the hell part of this was meant to make sense?
Apple suddenly can have their software pirated due to the result of a legal case in a completely different arena of the law?
What the fuck are you talking about?
Indeed what on earth was the grand parent talking about?
Granted the OS is pretty, but we're comparing ancient to modern, compare Vista to Leopard (or whatever it will be called) for a fair comparison.
Compare Apple's Office products to MS', who makes the better software?
Not that apple shouldn't have done checks at home, but given the fact that most employees are aware that they can be easily monitored under company premises (especially when working on a secretive stuff), most of such sources would typically NOT use company resources, so it doesn't make much sense to search them.
Instead ask the "journalist" himself.
Again, Apple SHOULD have done checks at home, just to be on the safe side of law at least.
Apple did introduce a great product in Ipod, proving that usability and industrial design can help corner a market. And the tie in to itunes was an excellent idea from the perspective of locking in a market. Furthermore the inability of ipod to understand any DRM other than Fairplay means taht any musician who wants to sell music and have it be portable while having DRM must sell via itunes. These are all great ways to sell a product, and "bring portable music to the masses."
History is full of great but evil inventors. For example, the inventor of the process that enables nitrgen rich fertilizers which saves countless lives also designed and took pleasure in designing German poison gas weapons.
I am not comparing Apple to that in any remote sense, but I am making the point that just because someone brings forth innovation to the world doesnt mean they get a free pass trampling rights.
We don't even want to know about the details. We forgive them anyway. But deep down inside we know that they are not really at fault or it was just an honest mistake. And I'm almost sure MS has something to do with this.
And to be honest, the amounts of money being demanded for use of the trademark (in Australia) are small change to the companies involved.
Would you like to see Micro$oft release a software product called Linux, just because Linus didn't retain the trademark on his own product?
http://www.ilaw.com.au/linuxfaq.html/ explains it a bit.
It seems like Linus (or his lawyers rather) want to protect the Linux trademark. Hypthetically speaking, if I had a product titled Lunix Utilities, I wouldn't seem to fall under that trademark use. However, if my company or product name was MikeRoweSoft or Lindows, Microsoft could and would sue me.
*Shrug* It's a pretty hairy issue. I see where Linus or his lawyers are coming from, but I wonder why the demand in monetary payment in order to ensure their trademark isn't abused.
That there weren't software patents back then. Windows wouldn't exist, or if it did a hefty fee would be paid to Apple for every license.
Oh wait patents foster innovation. Right....
Maybe they don't quite agree that the victim of a crime has to shoulder all the cost and hardship of the investigation.
This is not a criminal lawsuit. This is a civil case.
From Wikipedia:
In civil law cases, the "burden of proof" requires the plaintiff to convince the trier of fact (whether judge or jury) of the plaintiff's entitlement to the relief sought. This means that the plaintiff must prove each element of the claim, or cause of action, in order to recover.
If this wasn't the case, you would have companies making sweeping allegations and suing with no evidence. But no company would ever do that, would they?
I don't care what Apple's lawyers think. As far as I'm concerned they should be up against the wall by now.
The story is that the judge unsealed the documents, and those documents show that Apple didn't fulfil its obligations to investigate internally FIRST. Besides, this is the EFF, they usually pick their causes well. I trust their legal actions much more than any corporations, because they're not out just to make money, they're here to protect people's rights.
I wonder if that's grounds for a malicious prosecutions lawsuit. It would serve them right. Those laws exist to protect the rights of the people, and Apple just ignored them.
Apple does make some very good products, but that's no excuse to trample people's rights. All corporations have the ability to be evil, by their nature. They really need to be held in check when that comes out. Even Google with its "do no evil" slogan has the potential.
http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/archive/2004/0 4/27/120944.aspx
Follow the link for some history and yes you will find support for the claim.
Use Adsense for Charity
You are right Office only showed up in 1990, however Word and Excel for the Mac were originally released in 1985.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Word
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Excel
I should know as I extensively used them in my first love affair with the Mac platform in undergraduate school 1984-1989.
B
Apple gave Microsoft the development kit for development of Microsoft Excel, which was first launched on the Mac in 1985 and Word the same year. At that time, Microsoft was DOS only.
The future is in beta
No one will dare publish interesting rumors, even if they're not legally protected trade secrets, unless they're either judgment-proof or have their own pack of snarling lawyers.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
Rumors don't come from nowhere. What if all Apple needs to accomplish is to intimdidate a few talkative employees? They don't have to win a lawsuit to demonstrate that they mean business, just bring a suit to court. And consider the other costs of "due diligence": if they have to go from cube to cube with a polygraph, they are going to alienate a lot of their own people. "Shoot first and ask questions later" can work OK if you only mean to fire warning shots.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Sitting in a different jurisdiction, knowing little about U.S. law, I find myself asking: So all it takes for a U.S. corporation to compel a journalist (or anybody else) to reveal his source is that they conduct an internal investigation?
I understand we are talking about the First Amendment here, about fundamental civil rights. You should be able to talk to the press and trust them not to reveal their source unless some action of your own allows them to. If the law won't respect your anonymity, you should know so beforehand and not talk at all. But here your right to anonymity is appearantly dependent on a procedural matter of fact that can be established only after you have talked to the press, and it's the plaintiff alone that gets to decide whether that investigation will happen.
Imagine being denied your Fifth Amendment right not to testify against yourself merely because the plaintiff has acted with due diligence and performed the (hypothetically) required tap-dance-on-a-harpsicorde in the courtroom. It's not like Apple must obtain someone's permission to conduct an internal investigation, right?
Did anyone stop and think that it was more of a scare tactic than anything else? I for one can't sit here and actually believe that the lawyers for the fastest growing computer company in the world has inept lawyers.
My guess is they did it to scare the people who were leaking, just to prove that they CAN do something, without actually DOING something.
But then again, I'm just speculating.
Word was first relased in 1983 for DOS and then '85 for Mac. Word for Windows didn't come around until '89.
Excel, while not Microsoft's first spreadsheet, originated on the Mac in '85. Windows didn't get their share until '87.
Anm
(PS- nice slashdot id, neighbor)
"IANAL, but I would've thought that the court/judge should have verified that Apple "thoroughly" investigated it's staff in-house, before violating the journalist's freedoms. After all, if any one could just show up in court and say: "Looky here judge, it's like i say it is, y'hear?" then there wouldn't be much of a judicial process, would there... But please correct me if i'm wrong... "
You're welcome.
Apple went to the court and asked the judge: "Please make these journalists tell who leaked our trade secrets". The journalists got some lawyers how are telling the judge: "No, don't make them tell!". Apple's lawyers and the journalists' lawyers now send papers to the court with their reasons why the journalists should have to tell the names or why the shouldn't.
In one of these papers Apple explains what they have done to find out themselves where the leak is. That paper was "sealed" so that nobody can read it except the judge and the lawyers, apparently because it itself contains trade secrets. The other side managed to "unseal" the paper, so that everyone can read it except for the trade secret bits. All that is absolutely normal business.
The unusual bit now is that the EFF, which pays the lawyers, goes and publishes the contents of that paper - that is a strategy that you would usually expect from the likes of SCO. They also give an interpretation of the contents of the paper - that Apple hasn't done enough to find the leak themselves, therefore the journalists should not be made to tell their sources.
So what we have is a paper; we can consider the contents of the paper as fact (because lying to the court would be a very very bad idea), and we know how the EFF wants the judge and the world to interpret the contents of the paper. You can assume that Apple's lawyers have a very different opinion, but Apple apparently wants to handle their court cases in the courts, and not in the press, unlike the EFF. So while some bits of the article are based on fact, the headline and the conclusion that they want you to draw is pure spin by one of the two competing sides.
What the article presents as its headline: "Apple Fails Due Diligence", is exactly what the judge has to decide. No such decision has been made. This is the same situation as if a man accused of theft went to court, the defense lawyer says "my client is not guilty", and then you write an article with the headline "Client not guilty of theft!", stating his innocence as fact when all you have is what the lawyer said.
I wonder why the demand in monetary payment
... is not designed to generate profits for anyone.
Then why not find out? Google it:
Linus Clarifies the Linux Trademark
Linus went on to underscore the fact that policing trademarks is not a method of making money, quite the opposite due to Lawyer fees, "not only do I not get a cent of the trademark money, but even LMI (who actually administers the mark) has so far historically always lost money on it."
The Linux Mark Institute
Then why can't I play songs purchased from iTunes on my Creative player?
Turn their old "RIP MIX BURN" ad campaign on its head.
MIX the songs into a playlist about 70 minutes long.
BURN them to CD.
RIP them to MP3.
In some cases there MAY be a detectable loss of quality from the re-encoding, but if you cared about quality you'd have bought the original CD instead of the lossy-compressed online versions anyway.