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Apple Trade Secret Suit Final Arguments Today
An anonymous reader writes "The final day of arguments takes place today in Santa Clara, CA, in the suit between Apple and the bloggers who outed their secrets." From the article: "Apple often dispatched cease and desist letters to the editors or these sites or initiated internal investigations to smoke out which of its employees were leaking information. But the lawsuit against the Power Page marked the first time that Apple attempted to use California law protecting corporate trade secrets to suppress the early disclosure of its product development plans by a Web media outlet. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is representing the Does, or the unnamed sources of the alleged information leak, contends that a ruling in this case could set a precedent that determines whether online sites can qualify as journalists who can work under First Amendment protections"
I find it difficult to conceive that a court will rule that the first ammendment protection of the press only covers those with multibillion dollar media conglomerates or old family owned newspapers behind them. Freedom of the press is freedom of speech as it applies to written or photographic material and should be no less free than speech and is not limited to those with journalism degrees.
Whether the trade secret law applies may be another matter beyond my knowledge, but the fact is that the website in question did not sign a non-disclosure agreement with Apple and is free to publish what it likes provided it is not libelous. That includes publishing information that Apple insiders chose to disclose to the site in violation of their agreements with Apple not to do so. Apple is obscessive about secrecy and it will just have to learn to live with leaks or Steve Jobs will just have to close the company down, fire all the workers and hire oompa loopas.
I would personally argue that there has to be a parallel with libel cases here. The First Amendment says that the govenment will not legislate to restrict freedom of speech; in this case, it's being argued that juducial precedent here will also act to restrict general freedom of speech, contrary to the promises of the First Amendment. However, no-one argues when the case is about libel. In fact, it's a given that the courts' powers are needed to settle a libel case satisfactorily, so there is a precedent for a court ruling on a potential First Amendment issue where it hasn't affected the 'right to free speech'.
I would argue that a useful test for this case and others like it would be:
In other words, if the blogger only told one person about the trade secret, and this person was in a position to make such use of the secret as to cause harm to the secret's owner, would the blogger still be entitled to First Amendment rights on free speech? Or could he be ordered by a court to provide the name of his source? Or does the fact that he told everyone via a [website|magazine|broadsheet] gain him extra privileges?You see, First Amendment aside, it raises a very interesting and important question: the person who contacted PowerPage was under NDA, and violated that. If the court rules against Apple, then it means that non-disclosure agreements can be considered null and void provided you disclose for the purpose of widespread dissemination. It says "okay, you agree not to tell anyone about what you're doing. Well, except someone who'll tell everyone else. That's okay, because it's covered by First Amendment press rights, which means we're not allowed to find out who did it. But if you tell our competitors directly, you're toast." If the information is of a type covered by whistleblower laws (i.e. if it discloses a crime, or if withholding such information is likely to cause harm), then the 'leaker' is protected by those. If the whistleblower laws aren't appropriate, then they aren't protected, and they therefore shouldn't be allowed to hide behind journalists, bloggers, or anyone. If they're not allowed to tell Bill Gates about the stunning nw things being planned for OS X 10.6, they shouldn't be given express permission to tell Walt Mossberg or Paul Thurrott either. But a ruling against Apple in this case kinda leans that way, to my eye.
As to the comment about C|Net & the Intel switch, I would argue that that had less effect than this. It was 'leaked' a couple of days before the official announcement. Certainly not so far back that Apple's competitors could use the knowledge to significantly harm Apple. However, seeing that the 'Asteroid' project still hasn't appeared, I would conjecture that it was not close to release, and that in fact when the information was published on PowerPage a competitor found out about it and basically scuppered the project for Apple:
Imagine that Apple had an agreement with another company that this other company would provide similar hardware for the Mac, not just for PCs; now imagine that this company is renewing a five-yearly contract by which it agrees to make products with support for the Macintosh; now imagine that, upon reading PowerPage, they turn to Apple and say they'll drop the Mac market completely unless Apple drops the project-- hands it over as part of their part of the project, in fact.
Of course, we don't know anything about it for certain, but certainly that scenario isn't entirely far-fetched. And it's quite possible that Apple is very keen to know just who wasted the couple million dollars they pumped into R & D on this thing. I know I would be.
-Q
It causes no harm? Did you notice how the stock price tanked when Apple announced the HiFi and Mac mini intel instead of the rumoured products? Have you noticed that asteroid has not seen the light of day yet?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Attacked in what manner? Powerpage was subpoenaed (not sued) to give up their source. Then the court ordered them to do so. Powerpage and the EFF has appealed the case.
What are the underhanded tactics Apple is supposed to be using here?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.