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Apple and Nokia Outraged That Samsung Lawyers Leaked Patent License Terms
An anonymous reader writes "U.S. courts have strict rules in place governing the treatment of confidential business information. The most sensitive information is labeled 'highly confidential — attorneys' eyes only', meaning that only a company's outside lawyers are allowed to see it. The Apple-Nokia patent settlement contract and deals Apple struck with others (Ericsson, Sharp, Philips) were such highly confidential business information. But a Samsung executive allegedly boasted in a patent licensing negotiation with Nokia a few months ago about knowing all the terms of the Apple-Nokia deal because the Korean company's lawyers had provided it to their client, against the rules. The United States District Court for the Northern District of California now wants to find out more before deciding on sanctions against Samsung and its law firm, Quinn Emanuel."
I don't really care who wins the smart phone war, but it's pretty clear that Samsung is just as evil and corrupt as every other large corporation. Let the smack down begin.
Death by giant hornet stings.
Why does this read like a PR document written by Apple to sway public opinion? Both parties have come close or outright crossed the ethical lines in their various legal battles. Finger waving or sanctioning a lawyer here or there does not change the core issues. Rather is distracts from the core issues and gains sentiment (or attempts to).
How exactly do you enforce that?
Not Samsung. The legal firm, the only ones privvy to the terms. Samsung itself only received the information, and stupidly let on knowing the information, but ultimately it's the legal firm that screwed up. Not Samsung.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Except, as TFS says, there are strict rules in place for some things.
Sometimes, a lawyer is needed to be a buffer between you and something else you're not legally allowed to know. If this was the case, then the lawyer has either broken the law, or the standards of the Bar. Those are the kinds of things that can get you in trouble.
Whether or not this is true is a different story, but if it is true, there could be some serious consequences.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
He doesnt seem to be notable enough for wikipedia but there's a cite in an IBM press conference from two years ago as "Dr. Seungho Ahn, Executive Vice President and Head of the IP Center, Samsung Electronics."
He may become an overnight celebrity of sorts.
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All legal settlements should be public knowledge. It is a reversal on the basic ethic principles of our society when public entities, like the NSA, can spy upon private affairs with impunity, and individuals and private entities are denied what should be public knowledge.
Ignoring all the florian-spew and articles based on it, it seems an expert report was accidentally insufficiently redacted, and Samsung has not been fast enough in their investigation of where all the information went, so the magistrate judge is setting a deadline and ordering some depositions. Yawn.
With regulations, of course.
Libertarians live in rainbow-and-pony-filled imaginary worlds of wishful and magical thinking
With regulations, of course.
Libertarians live in rainbow-and-pony-filled imaginary worlds of wishful and magical thinking
As opposed to being filled with hope and change?
The article puts it a little differently. An expert wrote a report supporting Samsung's royalty claims and his report contained some information on royalties Apple was paying to other IP holders. At some point Samsung's law firm sent executives a draft of the report containing the Apple royalty info.
I'm shocked that Samsung, a company that was run by a CEO convicted of tax evasion and indicted for bribery and embezzlement, would do something like this.
If you did nothing wrong, then you have nothing to hide. Why not embrace that culture of transparency giving the example?
That does not mean they can't keep secrets it just means they can't use the court to enforce it. So I just offer all my employees $X bonus if no leaks occur.
Negative, we live in the real world, where 'regulation' has been perverted and redefined to mean 'hiring an army of bureaucrats and letting them run amok.'
There's no need for regulation in the modern sense, just application of good old fashioned criminal and civil law.
But more than that, there needs to be a bit of a cultural shift. Right now it's way too acceptable to write off all sorts of corruption as 'just the way the world is' and tolerate it rather than digging it out and exposing it to the light.
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So ONLY the lawyers can see the agreement between the two companies? Not the executives? So in other words, an agreement occurred but it is completely impossible to comply with them because nobody at the company knows what the terms are. Genius!
Lawyers are also a part of the legal system. While they may work for their clients, they are granted special rights in many crountries, inclusding the US aince they agree to the normal proessional ethics. It is very possible that a lawyer must retain knowledge from the client under specific circumstances. Lawyers are paid by the client for a very specific service. They got access to the licensing condition so that they could judge if these touch their clients interest. while i would liek to see patent swaps/licensing deals more transparent (I would think of a "stock exchange model" for licenses) , i have to recognize that currently these are view as a kind of private contract.
Summary executions of anyone *suspected* of keeping a corporate secret. We can sell licenses like we do for deer or elk during hunting season. Give 'em a name and a tag and make sure they register the body with the local game warden when they finish.
Guns, meaningless killing, and anti-corporatism - It's the perfect left-right-libertarian utopia
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
By filing a suit, you have raised the stakes and any resolution should be public.
There are only two conditions where the settlement would want to be private - the defendant knows they screwed up and want to cover up any future liability or embarrassment, or the plaintiff was over aggressive and filed a questionable suit to force an issue with the defendant and wants to save face. Fuck that.
If you file a suit it has the MEAN something. Using it in any other way makes it easy to back down, undermining the system and either letting real crooks off the hook or giving bullies another tool to badger their opponents.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Heck, I was involved in a lawsuit where the plaintiff company obtained confidential information about the defendant company before the lawsuit (industrial espionage, anyone?) and managed to get a judge's order to restrict that knowledge to the lawyers. The result was defendant's lawyers were not allowed to show the defendant their own documents.
How do I know? During a deposition, plaintiffs showed me (on the defendant side) one of defendants documents marked confidential, but also marked as produced by plaintiff in discovery. And STILL defendants' lawyers were not allowed to tell the defendants that plaintiffs confidential information in their possession.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
The general corrolation between economic freedom, a central subset of general libertarian (small L) concepts, and advancing plentitude is well-established.
The best an honest leftist can claim is riding on this untamed and unparalleled wealth and advancement engine to take off the rough edges.
However, the traditional leftist tenet, that government should be in charge of everything throuch central planning has, by the exact same human history, been found massively lagging comparatively, at best (old China, USSR), and murderously retrograde at worst (North Korea).
No national politician in the US even goes near that anymore, for fear of, correctly, being thought a fool. They sing the praises of freedom, including economic freedom, which new China is proving yet again.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
When has he ever been unbiased? Most important, when has he ever been actually right in his forecasts?
So an employee at Samsung in negotiating with Nokia, tolled the Nokia employee that he knew the details of the Apple-Nokia deal. Which they were not supposed know.
I say hang Samsung out to dry for illegally obtaining proprietary information. We all know they did. After all why would an employee lie during negotiations?
Hi Rightwing I am Leftwing. If we work together I'm certain that we can get this bird off the ground.
Free and efficient markets require information. All legal settlements should be required to be public by law. The same is true for most contracts and other deals (including employment contracts).
Making that happen would also be very simple: if it's not public, it's not enforceable in a court of law.
If it happened outside the US, US laws wouldn't really matter, right?
...
The extortionists don't want their new targets to know how much they extorted from prior victims.
This is why they always want the victim to sign a NDA.
Just another attack by the darkside, nothing more.
Barnes & Noble Exposes Microsoft's "Trivial" Patents and Strategy Against Android
Barnes & Noble did not put up with the BS, and neither will Samsung.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Patent deals shouldn't be a private matter, since a patent is an agreement between the patent holder and the public, dealings and licensing of patents should also be public.
The guy has less credibility that Enderle, if such a thing is possible.
The Chinese milk poisoning scandal and the Bangladesh building collapse are very major reminders of what your unregulated society would look like. If you want a few more try talking to someone over thirty. If you want a vast amount more try talking to someone over 70 who lived in a company town. They were living inside the "libertarian dream", just as workers in "illegal" Chinese coal mines are doing now.
That is my opinion, and i would vote for a political party which likes to implement this, but currently the law says otherwise.
Negative. The Chinese system has little resemblance to a system of common law and strict liability. It looks much more like our current system of privilege and regulation, in fact.
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That's correct - it's "might makes right" which is the obvious outcome of your suggestion.
"That's correct - it's "might makes right" which is the obvious outcome of your suggestion."
My suggestion was application of criminal and civil law. How that equates to "might makes right" is a sheer mystery. You appear to have some sort of mental difficulty.
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There are legitimate reasons to have NDA in place. I worked on a project for a large jeweller, and had access to shipping data. Let's just say some items rely on security through obscurity , and if I revealed the data, it would expose them to crime,and force them to use more secure (and expensive) shipping, making their products less competitive, and more expensive for Joe Average who wants to buy an engagement ring for his sweetheart.
"Industrial grade diamonds". Check.
Because might aka money can afford more civil law time than you. Thus might makes right.
You cannot afford to spend years in court, $BIG_COMPANY|$RICH_PERSON can. This means they can infringe on your rights and then tie you up in courts for years. They do not need to win the court cases only drag them out long enough that you are too poor to continue.
You have the mental difficulty of not seeing what is already happening and would continue to happen.
Economic freedom requires functional markets. This includes the need for basic regulation. If only to address the lack of perfect information. For instance unregulated meat would be a nightmare. Companies can change names quickly enough you would never know what the quality of the product was.
They would simply ban words like that from meetings. It would be to improve customer premium experience or some similar horseshit.
The lack of a decent way to create perfect market competition is what drives me to support what you might call leftist policies. Simply as a way to address needs that our non-perfect market fails to.
The advantage the richer man holds in a common law court is significantly less than in a situation of regulatory capture.
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Says someone who has never been in this situation.
If you can't even get recourse the risk of regulatory capture is better.
I second this notion. How else does one actually want to guarantee FRAND?
I very strongly disagree and suggest you look at what happens in places with few regulations to see why I disagree. Once again I suggest you speak to elderly people so you can understand that what I'm writing about was happening in your own backyard and that bringing it back is undesirable.
You are citing areas that combine arbitrary "regulations" with a severe lack of the sort of common law that I am talking about, as an example of what I am talking about? You are completely upside down and backwards. Talk to elderly people? Yes, you should. My grandfather is dead now or he would be well over the century mark, and his ghost is at my shoulder laughing at you right now.
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You just seem to be too naive to understand that liberty requires a bit of effort, and some of that is regulation, otherwise all power concentrates into a very small number of hands and the current common law only applies to a select few. Google "company town" and I'm sure you'll find something, but of course you've totally ignored the two examples I gave above (food safety and building safety regulations) so it appears you don't want to consider anything that tests your simplistic naive viewpoint.
"late 70s"
" They recall the famous quote "you can't run a coal mine without a machine gun" coming from the sort of environment you are advocating."
No, they dont. They remember it coming from a very different environment. You can keep asserting black is white and night is day all you want, you're spitting into the wind.
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Has your life really been that sheltered?
Patent deals shouldn't be a private matter, since a patent is an agreement between the patent holder and the public, dealings and licensing of patents should also be public.
So why doesn't Samsung re.lease any of their patent deals?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
I second this notion. How else does one actually want to guarantee FRAND?
Yeah, this is why the non-FRAND-term patent license between Apple and Nokia should be forced out in the open, while Samsung can keep the actual licensing terms for different parties of the standard essential patents Apple supposedly violates a secret.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.