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Apple Demands Prototype iPhone Back

freelancing said:
Let's step back and think of this as a car with LoJack on it. Someone leaves their car running while they run in to drop off some dry cleaning. Someone "finds" the car - totally lost with no owner. I mean, it's not like they carjacked anyone - they "found it" and possibly drove around looking for the owner. Then, they drive home and go to sleep. The next morning, they examine the car they found. Cool - it's a Dodge Viper. This might be worth some money. No -wait, it probably belongs to *someone* ... but wait again, the ignition switch has just been disabled. The person who found it clearly owns the car now - because it's been bricked. See - it doesn't seem so ambiguous when it's a car. It shouldn't change simply because it's something someone can slip into their pocket without anyone seeing.

:apple:
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How does this even make sense. Some guy leaves his iPhone in a bar, doesn't come back to get it, apparently makes no attempt to find it - and that's comparable to someone parking their car and running errands?
 
coleridge78 said:
Explain. You're wrong, so it will be interesting.
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He is saying that he can walk onto a crowed American Airlines flight and yell "I have a bomb strapped to my chest," but that is ok because he has the first amendment. I dare captain go back to school to try it. :rolleyes:
 
extraextra said:
How does this even make sense. Some guy leaves his iPhone in a bar, doesn't come back to get it, apparently makes no attempt to find it - and that's comparable to someone parking their car and running errands?
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The previous commenter stated that "once it's bricked" that ownership becomes iffy. That was the point of my weak analogy. Like Yoda says, "size matters not." We see car: BIG. iPhone: small. They are both items that do not belong to the person who 'found' them. One was easily slipped into a pocket, the other one, not so much. Either way, once the car is bricked, it doesn't belong to the car thief. Likewise, once the phone is bricked, it doesn't become property of the guy who 'found' it.
 
ddarko said:
Trade secret protection is granted by a law passed by a government entity. First Amendment therefore applies and is a defense that's available to a news org. This is settled law.
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You are answering the wrong question. That was not the previous person's assertion.
 
kernkraft said:
You cannot be serious to suggest that Gizmodo, a completely legitimate website would produce a fake letter that was not from Apple or wasn't true representation of the correspondence from Apple Inc (whether it was a letter or email)?

Just out of curiosity - how old are you?
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How old was Dan Rather? :confused:
 
freelancing said:
The difference here is between privacy and ownership/possession. The phone was laying there. There would be nothing wrong for anyone to pick it up and examine it, trying to find the legitimate owner. Slipping into your pocket is another story. The guy who called police did not first take the thumb drive and see if he could sell the contents.
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No, but he looked at data that did not belong to him, that was my point. Then the police looked at data without a warrant. All based on the thumb drive being left out in the open.

Selling is another issue
 
marcfogel said:
No, but he looked at data that did not belong to him, that was my point. Then the police looked at data without a warrant. All based on the thumb drive being left out in the open.

Selling is another issue
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There was no expectation of privacy, because it was in the open. If you leave a laptop at the bar I can look through it in a good-faith attempt to try to figure out the owner. I have not taken any action to deprive you of its use.

*Taking something* with the intent to deprive the owner of it has nothing to do with that scenario. There is no expectation of privacy in many public circumstances; but you do not give up your property rights when you take something out in public. Obviously.

Taking and looking are two different things.
 
coleridge78 said:
There was no expectation of privacy, because it was in the open. If you leave a laptop at the bar I can look through it in a good-faith attempt to try to figure out the owner. I have not taken any action to deprive you of its use.

*Taking something* with the intent to deprive the owner of it has nothing to do with that scenario. There is no expectation of privacy in many public circumstances; but you do not give up your property rights when you take something out in public. Obviously.

Taking and looking are two different things.
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good point. I do wish I was a fly on the wall when the 5K transaction went down.
 
cmaier said:
What is your legal basis for saying that somehow paying for the information changes things? What cause of action are you thinking of, and which element of that cause of action does the payment satisfy?
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Because paying for the info may lead a court to conclude the news org may link it to the original misappropriation of the trade secret. See the Bartnicki case for why paying for something may be a factor that a court weighs.
 
coleridge78 said:
There was no expectation of privacy, because it was in the open. If you leave a laptop at the bar I can look through it in a good-faith attempt to try to figure out the owner. I have not taken any action to deprive you of its use.

*Taking something* with the intent to deprive the owner of it has nothing to do with that scenario. There is no expectation of privacy in many public circumstances; but you do not give up your property rights when you take something out in public. Obviously.

Taking and looking are two different things.
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Well stated. If the thumb drive had encryption on it and the guy broke/hacked his way through, then I believe it would be a warrantless search.

I'm wondering - why did Apple wipe the device the next day. Was it because the Apple engineer didn't realize it was missing until the next day, or was it because the guy who 'found' it knew about MobileMe and either put it in Airplane mode or otherwise turned it off so it couldn't be tracked until he got a seller?
 
for you lostfrog.org fans... :p
 

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ddarko said:
Because paying for the info may lead a court to conclude the news org may link it to the original misappropriation of the trade secret. See the Bartnicki case for why paying for something may be a factor that a court weighs.
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What's interesting here is that Gizmodo sought the device to boost its site traffic and ad revenue. They exploited a failure in security by Apple to make money. Although they were not a competitor of Apple's, by virtue of their deeds, they have revealed volumes of information to engineers of competing devices, including ones we have not seen yet on the market.

If, for example, the prototype does reveal Apple's move toward a consumer-accessible/replaceable battery, this could change the marketing of competitors that will no longer address that as a flaw/shortcoming with the iPhone - giving competitors inside information on engineering AND marketing tactics.

So, while they are not directly stealing the phone to hijack it and make a fake one or competing product using knowledge gained through the disassembly of the device, they are letting others do so by proxy.
 
freelancing said:
The previous commenter stated that "once it's bricked" that ownership becomes iffy. That was the point of my weak analogy. Like Yoda says, "size matters not." We see car: BIG. iPhone: small. They are both items that do not belong to the person who 'found' them. One was easily slipped into a pocket, the other one, not so much. Either way, once the car is bricked, it doesn't belong to the car thief. Likewise, once the phone is bricked, it doesn't become property of the guy who 'found' it.
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I read that comment and thought the poster meant that once the phone was bricked it would be difficult to determine who owned the phone (e.g., because the contacts, email and other potentially identifying info was no longer available).
 
Depending on who and where exactly the phone was found determines who has ownership of it. However, none of the finders trump the ownership rights of the true owner (Apple).

There is nothing Apple can do to them. Until they establish true ownership of the device, I would assume it is the website's.

From here on out, as long as Apple can establish that they are in fact the true owner, which I am sure they can do quite easily, the website needs to give it back to Apple. If they want to play games, and try keep it longer, they can try go through court actions in which Apple will demonstrate ownership and a judge will give them a summary judgement.
 
freelancing said:
What's interesting here is that Gizmodo sought the device to boost its site traffic and ad revenue. They exploited a failure in security by Apple to make money. Although they were not a competitor of Apple's, by virtue of their deeds, they have revealed volumes of information to engineers of competing devices, including ones we have not seen yet on the market.

If, for example, the prototype does reveal Apple's move toward a consumer-accessible/replaceable battery, this could change the marketing of competitors that will no longer address that as a flaw/shortcoming with the iPhone - giving competitors inside information on engineering AND marketing tactics.

So, while they are not directly stealing the phone to hijack it and make a fake one or competing product using knowledge gained through the disassembly of the device, they are letting others do so by proxy.
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Indeed, hence Bartnicki. Unfortunately, Gizmodo is occupying an quite different position from the radio station in that case.

Setting aside the "public concern" issue... Gizmodo did not buy a possibly illegal recording, but a definitely stolen piece of tangible property. A key turn of Bartnicki is that the radio station itself did nothing illegal in obtaining the tape; there is no criminal statute that addresses buying a possibly-illegally-obtained recording as long as you did not set out intentionally to incite someone to commit a crime. Whereas there are several that address buying stolen goods, inciting a violation of trade secret protection, interference with trade, etc. The legality of the act of the purchase might, it seems judging by Bartnicki, make a difference.
 
freelancing said:
What's interesting here is that Gizmodo sought the device to boost its site traffic and ad revenue. They exploited a failure in security by Apple to make money. Although they were not a competitor of Apple's, by virtue of their deeds, they have revealed volumes of information to engineers of competing devices, including ones we have not seen yet on the market.

If, for example, the prototype does reveal Apple's move toward a consumer-accessible/replaceable battery, this could change the marketing of competitors that will no longer address that as a flaw/shortcoming with the iPhone - giving competitors inside information on engineering AND marketing tactics.

So, while they are not directly stealing the phone to hijack it and make a fake one or competing product using knowledge gained through the disassembly of the device, they are letting others do so by proxy.
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But if the phone is being release in two months, how much damage can be claimed for that short period of time.
 
What's up with using old letterhead?

For a company that leaves no stone unturned in ensuring even the barcodes look beautiful and modern, it seems odd that Apple's counsel is writing on c. 1999 letterhead.

Notice the purple 'five flavor' iMac-era logotype and the Apple Garamond for the address block. These were replaced by monochrome logos and Apple Myriad years ago.

So, is the letter just on very old letterhead, or is it fake?
 
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