Journalists and trade secrets....

[absolut_mac]

Interesting article in today's business section of the Los Angeles Times.

It's still too early to tell which way Apple is leaning, but they seemed quite eager to settle those lawsuits against those developers/students who illegally posted Tiger ASAP. Two down and one left in that particular case.

....What's rather nervy about the lawsuit is that Apple didn't name the websites or their operators as defendants or directly accuse them of theft. Instead, it named 25 "John Does" — presumably the confidential sources. Apple then subpoenaed PowerPage's e-mails from its Internet service provider, hoping that the messages would help it fill in the blanks.....

....This brings us to the "trade secrets" at the center of this case. Apple claims that the disclosures deprived it of a competitive advantage. But the websites didn't reveal anything technologically groundbreaking or unique, on the level of the Coca-Cola formula (to cite the quintessential "trade secret"); indeed, several devices resembling Asteroid have been on the market for some time. What Apple lost was its unilateral ability to control the publicity and marketing of Asteroid — something with obvious value to the company, but hardly a genuine trade secret.....

Here's the link for those who want to read the whole story. It will be good for about a week.


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-...coll=la-headlines-business&ctrack=1&cset=true

 

[strider42]

I think a company is entitled to determine what it considers a trade secret, not some media outlet. if they feel it was important, and they do, then that's fine. And if coke was going to come out with a new product and it got leaked to the media weeks or months before it came out, you can bet they'd be rightfully pissed even if it wasn't the actual formula that was leaked.

And I think they missed the point. They didn't name the websites as defendents because they didn't do anything wrong. It was the sources that did and apple supeanoed to get the name of the sources who broke their NDA's. I mean, that's pretty basic.