Bye ThinkSecret
December 20th, 2007, Tomasz RychlickiO’Grady v. SUPERIOR COURT OF CALIFORNIA, 2005 CA App. Ct. Pleadings 28579H (CA App. Ct. Pleadings 2005). Some excerpts.
Petitioners seek to stop [**7] a third party from providing the identities of persons who stole highly valuable trade secrets that belong to Apple Computer and were illegally disseminated through Petitioners’ websites. After conducting a thorough but unsuccessful investigation into this unauthorized disclosure, Apple served a narrowly tailored subpoena on an email service provider to recover the stolen materials and discover who had misappropriated Apple’s trade secrets. Asserting special protections they claim attach to their purported role as “journalists,” Petitioners moved for a protective order to block this essential discovery. The trial court denied the motion and this petition followed.
Apple, the real party in interest, is the victim of a serious theft. Unknown individuals stole trade secrets about an unreleased Apple product, code-named “Asteroid,” from secure Apple facilities. Petitioners deliberately posted these misappropriated trade secrets on their websites “PowerPage” and “AppleInsider.” These posts contained little more than outright copies of Apple’s unreleased, copyrighted design, verbatim excerpts from Apple technical specifications, Apple’s pricing projections for Asteroid, and Apple’s comparison of the product to its anticipated competition.
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23. Respondent trial court granted Apple’s application on December 14, 2004, (Order Granting Ex Parte Application for Discovery and Issuance of Subpoenas (”Discovery Order 1″), Ex. 8, 71-72) authorizing Apple to serve subpoenas to “Powerpage.com, Appleinsider.com, and Thinksecret.com requiring each to produce all documents relating to any information posted on its site relating to an unreleased Apple product code named ‘Asteroid’ …” and to serve [*11] subpoenas on each of the Apple News Sites for information leading to the identity of “any individual or individuals who have knowledge regarding the posts on its site disclosing information about the Product … and individuals who received and/or edited information related to the Product.” Apple subsequently drafted and attempted to serve a subpoena on Apple Insider and Monish Bhatia.
And here are informations from different sources.
Apple and Think Secret have settled their lawsuit, reaching an agreement that results in a positive solution for both sides. As part of the confidential settlement, no sources were revealed and Think Secret will no longer be published. Nick Ciarelli, Think Secret’s publisher, said “I’m pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits.