Apple sues 19 year old over disclosure of trade secrets
AP reported that Apple Computer filed a trade secret lawsuit on Jan. 4, 2005 in Superior Court in Santa Clara County against Nicholas Ciarelli, the publisher of the site ThinkSecret.com and a 19 year old Harvard University student. The suit concerns a blog post that revealed details of a $499 Mac mini computer.
California has adopted a version of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. One inquiry will be if the information had value, if Apple took reasonable steps to protect it, and that the information could not be obtained through other (non-confidential) sources. Ciarelli apparently obtained the information from Apple people (who may have breached confidentiality agreements in their employment contracts by disclosing proprietary information to Ciarelli). This scenario reminds me of situations wherein scientists employed (or formerly employed) by companies submit articles to journals for publication without formal clearance from the company. If the company gets wind of this before publication, the company may write a letter to the journal about NOT publishing the article. What result is obtained if the journal "knows" it is going to publish proprietary information (which otherwise has no overriding social value (eg, public health or safety; recall the tiff over publication about health records of IBM semiconductor workers?))?
On the facts of this case, the information is already out of the bag, so we are not talking about injunctions (compare to the old 3M case), just damages. Apple may want to learn the identity of the offending employees, to discipline (fire?) them. Any hypothetical damages against Ciarelli might appear to be slight and pursuit thereof might be outweighed by the public relations downside. Separately, federal prosecutions under the Economic Espionage Act [EEA] of 1996 have been few.
Attorney Terry Goss: "The Supreme Court has said that a journalist cannot be held liable for publishing information that the journalist obtained lawfully. Think Secret has not used any improper newsgathering techniques. We will be filing a motion asking the Court to dismiss this case immediately on First Amendment grounds under a California statute which weeds out meritless claims that threaten First Amendment rights." [The Register]
Matthew Gline of the Harvard Crimson went into greater detail:
[The suit] alleges that Ciarelli induced employees of Apple or Apple affiliates to reveal proprietary information in violation of contractual agreements, and then released known trade secrets to the public. These employees are also targeted by the lawsuit, though their names are not yet known: Apple hopes to compel Think Secret to release the details of its communication with its sources so that the company can ascertain their identities and seeks damages from Think Secret directly for publishing its findings.
There are important questions raised here that are essential to understanding the rights and responsibilities of news sources (for example, The Crimson) generic cialis buy cheap cialis cialis viagra
California has adopted a version of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. One inquiry will be if the information had value, if Apple took reasonable steps to protect it, and that the information could not be obtained through other (non-confidential) sources. Ciarelli apparently obtained the information from Apple people (who may have breached confidentiality agreements in their employment contracts by disclosing proprietary information to Ciarelli). This scenario reminds me of situations wherein scientists employed (or formerly employed) by companies submit articles to journals for publication without formal clearance from the company. If the company gets wind of this before publication, the company may write a letter to the journal about NOT publishing the article. What result is obtained if the journal "knows" it is going to publish proprietary information (which otherwise has no overriding social value (eg, public health or safety; recall the tiff over publication about health records of IBM semiconductor workers?))?
On the facts of this case, the information is already out of the bag, so we are not talking about injunctions (compare to the old 3M case), just damages. Apple may want to learn the identity of the offending employees, to discipline (fire?) them. Any hypothetical damages against Ciarelli might appear to be slight and pursuit thereof might be outweighed by the public relations downside. Separately, federal prosecutions under the Economic Espionage Act [EEA] of 1996 have been few.
Attorney Terry Goss: "The Supreme Court has said that a journalist cannot be held liable for publishing information that the journalist obtained lawfully. Think Secret has not used any improper newsgathering techniques. We will be filing a motion asking the Court to dismiss this case immediately on First Amendment grounds under a California statute which weeds out meritless claims that threaten First Amendment rights." [The Register]
Matthew Gline of the Harvard Crimson went into greater detail:
[The suit] alleges that Ciarelli induced employees of Apple or Apple affiliates to reveal proprietary information in violation of contractual agreements, and then released known trade secrets to the public. These employees are also targeted by the lawsuit, though their names are not yet known: Apple hopes to compel Think Secret to release the details of its communication with its sources so that the company can ascertain their identities and seeks damages from Think Secret directly for publishing its findings.
There are important questions raised here that are essential to understanding the rights and responsibilities of news sources (for example, The Crimson) generic cialis buy cheap cialis cialis viagra