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"

Comments

This is conduct, not speech

[alfs boner]

To me, Apple's defense of its trade secrets is warranted and does not constitute violation of free speech.

    Certain business language such as stock trading information, executive orders, are priveleged outside of the realm of free speech. That is, utterances such as someone giving insider trading information can have active results that cause harm to people; it thus qualifies as conduct, since it has a locutionary force that separates it from harmless, mundane speech. Similarly, an executive telling an accountant to shred documents regarding financial figures is a violation of business conduct laws, and a general telling his subordinates to murder innocent civilians violates war crimes laws.

This is no different. Disclosing trade secrets has done and does do appreciable damage to the company for whom they are secrets. Whether or not it is sensible for Apple to go after blogs to protect its trade information is a matter I haven't really decided on. However, to me, it makes sense in the same way as Rudolph Guiliani's policy of going after small-time lawbreakers to deter the bigger offenses - go after jaywalking, so that it looks like you're tough on crime in general. Similarly, Apple is obviously protecting what appears like trivial information about an upcoming product to prevent bloggers from thinking they can get away with disclosing larger trade information.

Apple obviously made the wager that allowing people to disclose trade secrets at all damages them in such a way that all the free advertising in the world can't make up for. I'm not sure I would have made the same wager, but I can respect Apple's decision to make it.

Re:Bloggers = Journalists

[alfs boner]

This actually has *nothing to do* with whether bloggers are journalists! The judge in the case rightly realizes that, and didn't fall victim to the cries that this was a case of "blogger's rights" or any of that other shit. The judge realized that bloggers *can indeed* be "journalists", but not all bloggers *are* journalists. The cases should be decided on whether there is a clear and significant public interest. In the case of these web sites, there is most definitely not. Therefore, they are not protected.