"A California appeals court has agreed with the Electronic Frontier Foundation's request to unseal documents relating to Apple Computer Inc.'s legal campaign to force reporters for three Web sites to reveal their sources for articles that disclosed details about Apple's 'Asteroid' audio product.
A redacted version of the documents, which the California 6th District Court of Appeals ordered unsealed last week, is available on the EFF Web page that covers the history of the case: O'Grady et al v. Superior Court, also known as 'Apple v. Does.'
Three sites—PowerPage.org, ThinkSecret.com and AppleInsider.com—posted articles outlining details about an Apple product code-named Asteroid, which is a FireWire-based audio interface unit that will work with GarageBand, Apple's music composition application.
The EFF said that the documents show that Apple did not exhaust other avenues of investigation, as required by law, before seeking subpoenas against the three sites, which published information about the product before it was released. The EFF is one of the organizations providing legal representation for AppleInsider.com and PowerPage.org.The documents are declarations from two of Apple's security personnel who described the measures they took in investigating the source of the leak of the Asteroid information. They described tracking who had access to the documents and who accessed files on a secure internal serrver. "At a minimum," Opsahl said, "[Apple] should have asked for depositions or
testimony under oath from employees under suspicion."While they're willing to seek subpoenas for people without associations with Apple, they failed to review laptops or e-mails," Opsahl said. He added that no investigations were made as to whether confidential information was sent via a Web-based e-mail client or copied to a physical medium.
Apple has claimed that publication of the Asteroid information, and complicity in the leaking of the information, constituted a violation of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act as defined in California Civil Code 3426.1. The act states that if a company takes reasonable measures to protect information and this information has value in being kept secret, California courts should rule that such information should be afforded protection as a trade secret.
When contacted for comment on the court's decision to unseal the documents, an Apple spokesperson simply restated the company's reasons for filing the complaint. "Apple has filed a civil complaint against unnamed individuals who we believe stole our trade secrets and posted detailed information about an unannounced Apple product on the Internet," the spokesperson said. "
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1859271,00.asp?kc=ewnws091505dtx1k0000599
Posts
