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Apple Loses in Asteroid Lawsuit Ruling
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cornfedgrowth said:
This case just destroyed trade secret protection in the entire country. Anyone who violates a trade secret can now publish it in a blog and claim that they're protected by the First Amendment and the violated party can't do a thing to stop them.
Trade secret protection is over. And that's a very bad thing - many companies (like mine) rely heavily on trade secrets and NDAs to protect their investment in new technologies.
EricBrian said:
Nonsense. Apple can no longer go after the people who reveal trade secrets. All they have to to is publish a blog (even a blog on unrelated issues) and they can claim that they're a journalist and protected under the First Amendment.
And there most certainly was a trade secret involved. The fact that Apple later decided not to release the product doesn't change that.
dr_lha said:
Look up the history of Commodore.
Release of trade secret information can cost a company huge amounts of money.
EricBrian said:
Baloney. The development of new products is most certainly a trade secret. Pretending that it's not is absurd.
And under the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, knowingly publishing information which you know or reasonably should know is a trade secret is illegal and can be punished.
The rumors sites most certainly knew that Apple's future development plans are trade secrets and they therefore violated the UTSA.
Mal
macrumors 603
jragosta said:
You're missing the point. The person who initiates the leak has no protection from the First Amendment because they signed an NDA. They will still be prosecuted, provided Apple can figure out who it is (which, incidentally, if they publish a blog, will be far easier). Now, I agree with the ruling mostly, though if the rumor sites knew that their source was breaking an NDA, they should have been found guilty. I suppose the judge determined that was not the case.
jW
This case is hardly comparable to what happened to Commodore in the early 80s. Plus Commodore was run by morons who drove the company into the ground, despite having previously had the biggest selling computer in the world.jragosta said:
iAlan
macrumors 65816
Insider trading?
Let's say Apple are in the late stages of planning and development to launch a new computer, and this computer would seal the fate of the company one-way or the other. You could argue this for the Intel switch for example. If this information is 'leaked' to a rumor site then picked up by the main stream media - which rumors are now we have seen - and the stock price of Apple or any company involved with the new product (say Intel) could be impacted.
Let's say i was involve in the switch to Intel and had stock in Intel, if I leaked the switch i could see an immediate financial return due to this leak. Sure this is hard to prove, but Martha Stewart went away for something no so dissimilar.
We really don't know the motivation for those who leak info as it is done annonomously so there is no 'credit' or 'status' for leaking said info.
Let's say Apple are in the late stages of planning and development to launch a new computer, and this computer would seal the fate of the company one-way or the other. You could argue this for the Intel switch for example. If this information is 'leaked' to a rumor site then picked up by the main stream media - which rumors are now we have seen - and the stock price of Apple or any company involved with the new product (say Intel) could be impacted.
Let's say i was involve in the switch to Intel and had stock in Intel, if I leaked the switch i could see an immediate financial return due to this leak. Sure this is hard to prove, but Martha Stewart went away for something no so dissimilar.
We really don't know the motivation for those who leak info as it is done annonomously so there is no 'credit' or 'status' for leaking said info.
TheAnswer
macrumors 68030
bigandy said:
I know what it was supposedly rumored to be. I've seen the mockup on Appleinsider. I know according to the AI article that a rumored production run was to take place between Dec 04 and Jan 05.
I know the Mac Mini was introduced in Jan 05 and that it's May 06 now and still no "Asteroid" firewire breakout box.
Until I see an Apple branded breakout box, I'll continue to believe that (a) The "Asteroid" was a fake product designed to pinpoint leaks inside Apple or (b) The "Asteroid" was always the Mac Mini.
Gelfin
macrumors 68020
jragosta said:
You perhaps need to take a few deep breaths into a paper bag or something. This means or implies nothing of the sort.
If I sign an NDA with you and subsequently publish the information to a blog, you may sue me into the ground for breach of contract.
If I hand the information to my sister and have her post the information to her blog, such that it's obvious who leaked it, then you may likewise sue me.
If I anonymously hand the information to a blogger who doesn't know me personally, but after a proper internal investigation you are able to uncover my identity, then you may likewise sue me.
If I anonymously hand the information to a reporter from the Washington Post, but after a proper internal investigation you are able to uncover my identity, then you may likewise sue me.
As a part of your investigation, you may not lean on the Post reporter to divulge my identity (assuming he or she knows it). You may not use the courts to compel such disclosure.
All of the above was true prior to this ruling, and it is all true now. Apple would have known better than to subpoena the Washington Post in this hypothetical example, because Apple knows the Post has lawyers who understand journalistic rights. They were gambling that they could sandbag the bloggers into giving up names without risking the judge's decision (which was very likely to go the way it did).
The only difference in the law is that you may substitute "blogger" for "Post reporter" in the final point above. It's not even really a "difference" in the law so much as a previously untested, but perfectly reasonable, legal theory that has now been tested and validated. The court cannot Constitutionally draw a distinction between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" journalism, if such a distinction can actually be said to exist.
You will note that at no time did Apple sue any person at a rumor site for a violation of the UTSA. Perhaps some culpability could be proved under the legal definition of "misappropriation," but this legal question was never raised. In all likelihood Apple's lawyers would have assessed the cost of calculating and proving damages on that claim (a necessary component of USTA litigation) against the depth of the rumor sites' pockets and declined to bother. For that matter, they might have gotten to court and found that Apple's cultural preference for prerelease product secrecy does not attain the level of a trade secret under the USTA, given the fact that a great many prerelease products, both within Apple and without, are announced to great fanfare months or even years before their release with no consistent quantifiable impact on their financial success. In the Asteroid case, this product would certainly not have been the first such product on the market, so it might have been extremely difficult to prove that Apple suffered any financial harm at all by the general knowledge that they were developing such a product, described in such general terms.
I would suggest that Apple never had any interest in litigating the USTA against anyone. They wanted to leverage the USTA in order to compel disclosure of the Apple employee who leaked the information, who they would in turn terminate for cause rather than pursue in court. The court quite rightly ruled that this was a dodgy use of court authority in an attempt to shortcut a difficult and unpleasant internal investigation.
On the other hand, if one of Apple's competitors had come up with a competing product that was superficially similar to "Asteroid" as described, then Apple might have pursued USTA litigation against that competitor, citing their very public attempt to identify the source of the leaks as evidence that the information, even if acquired from a public website, was misappropriated insofar as the competitor knew it had been divulged to them through illicit means. They may or may not have succeeded with this tack.
IANAL, but one thing I do know about the law is that its application is far more complex and subtle than most people give it credit for.
dr_lha said:
No, THIS case isn't related to Commodore. But I was replying to someone who said it doesn't hurt for someone to release information about unreleased products. The dissemination of unreleased products can be very, very damaging to a company - as Commodore showed.
Gelfin said:
You used a lot of words to prove that you didn't read what I said.
All the person who publishes the information has to do is claim that they're a 'journalist' and they're off scot-free. So someone could publish it anonymously and get away with it (since the person whose trade secret was stolen no longer has any ability to find out who published it). Or they could give it to a rumor site and they're off scot-free (since the rumor site doesn't have to tell who gave them the information).
pizzach
macrumors member
SiliconAddict said:
Okay mister negative not looking for the good in things 🙂. You guys are thinking in terms of Apple. I am thinking on the terms of the likely engineer who violated an NDA of some kind. As a student of engineering I have heard the horror stories of people whistleblowing/violating nda's.... godda love school.
Whistleblowing? Maybe a heroic employee knew that Asteroid was an awful product (environmentally unsafe?) and risked his or her career by releasing the leak to purposely cause the news to come out early, thereby making Apple cancel the project before it was too late!pizzach said:
macaddicted
macrumors regular
Lets face it, if someone working at the National Enquirer is a reporter then how could someone who is reporting news on the web not be?
Counterfit
macrumors G3
Balance
Of course, NDA's should be enforced. It's a shame that we need to protect "journalists" that knowingly divulge company secrets. Here's the catch, though, we DO need to protect those people. This is because, in the long run, the investigative drive for a free flow of information helps our democracy and our economy. Not only does it uncover corrupt politicans and corrupt business people, it also helps keep others honest. In an era where information is becoming increasing powerful, it is even more necessary to ensure that this power is not concentrated in a few hands. This allows our economy to blossom as creative individuals use this information to create companiues that in turn drive our economy.
What does all this have to do with Apple's business? Not much, but laws are not perfect. They must properly deal with the most important and the most numerous cases, and still be generally applicable to everyone. If we made exceptions for every case, we'd have capricious laws applied even more unevenly. So this means we must suffer a little with minor company leaks in order to protect freedom of speech, which is so important for both our democracy and our economy. Of course, it's infinitely more complicated than this simple explanation, but generally I think the United States proves the value of these concepts by its wealth and relatively benign power. (Poorly thought out wars are horrible, but perfection is not a human characteristic.)
Of course, NDA's should be enforced. It's a shame that we need to protect "journalists" that knowingly divulge company secrets. Here's the catch, though, we DO need to protect those people. This is because, in the long run, the investigative drive for a free flow of information helps our democracy and our economy. Not only does it uncover corrupt politicans and corrupt business people, it also helps keep others honest. In an era where information is becoming increasing powerful, it is even more necessary to ensure that this power is not concentrated in a few hands. This allows our economy to blossom as creative individuals use this information to create companiues that in turn drive our economy.
What does all this have to do with Apple's business? Not much, but laws are not perfect. They must properly deal with the most important and the most numerous cases, and still be generally applicable to everyone. If we made exceptions for every case, we'd have capricious laws applied even more unevenly. So this means we must suffer a little with minor company leaks in order to protect freedom of speech, which is so important for both our democracy and our economy. Of course, it's infinitely more complicated than this simple explanation, but generally I think the United States proves the value of these concepts by its wealth and relatively benign power. (Poorly thought out wars are horrible, but perfection is not a human characteristic.)
"But what if it was something major that was leaked months in advance like the switch from PowerPC chips to INTEL. Having that information released early would have been a huge blow to Apple."
Uh, it WAS. It was leaked and rumored years in advance yet nobody listened (but it turned out it was true ALL along. EVERY version of OS X ever has been x86/PowerPC internally! Apple was ready to switch on a moment's notice)!!!
Sorry, but huge things like that don't hurt Apple because nobody believes them when they're leaked ahead 🙂
Uh, it WAS. It was leaked and rumored years in advance yet nobody listened (but it turned out it was true ALL along. EVERY version of OS X ever has been x86/PowerPC internally! Apple was ready to switch on a moment's notice)!!!
Sorry, but huge things like that don't hurt Apple because nobody believes them when they're leaked ahead 🙂