Saturday, March 19, 2005
U.S. companies can now keep deadly secrets
It is amazing the potential damage of one judges bad decision. Here is a case in point.
Actually, I just had a stray thought, could the accumlated pro-corporate precedents in law be caused by the tendency of big businesses to be able to afford better lawyers. No corruption, just a little gain every time because they have more success in their arguements. As I said a stray thought.
Jax
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS - Consider the following scenario. A drug company's research determines that one of its drugs already on the market is dangerous. The company decides the research results are proprietary trade secrets and bottles them up. It's clear that the public would be served by a conscientious insider leaking the research data to the media.
But after a ruling that could limit the public's access to vital information, insiders may now be reluctant to leak that kind of information. That's because Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg said a reporter's promise of confidentiality may not be worth anything when the leak involves trade secrets.
That wrongheaded decision came in a case in which Apple sought to compel several Web sites that published leaked information about upcoming products to reveal their sources. The ruling flies in the face of First Amendment guarantees and the California Shield Law, which allows journalists to keep sources confidential. . .
The ruling is deeply troubling on many levels. First of all, companies have wide latitude to determine what is a trade secret. Anything they don't want published could potentially qualify. Second, the media have long been protected when releasing leaked trade secrets, such as internal tobacco company documents. The media's role in a free society is to publish information that is accurate and of interest to the public, not to protect the commercial interests of private companies.
What's more, Kleinberg seems to indicate that he's in a position to decide what is newsworthy. Saying that "an interested public is not the same as the public interest," he suggests that information about upcoming Apple products is little more than gossip. That's a dangerous precedent. Would a leak last month about Hewlett-Packard's imminent firing of Carly Fiorina be news or mere gossip? Could a wide swath of information about private businesses become off-limits to reporters? (Link)
Actually, I just had a stray thought, could the accumlated pro-corporate precedents in law be caused by the tendency of big businesses to be able to afford better lawyers. No corruption, just a little gain every time because they have more success in their arguements. As I said a stray thought.
Jax
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS - Consider the following scenario. A drug company's research determines that one of its drugs already on the market is dangerous. The company decides the research results are proprietary trade secrets and bottles them up. It's clear that the public would be served by a conscientious insider leaking the research data to the media.
But after a ruling that could limit the public's access to vital information, insiders may now be reluctant to leak that kind of information. That's because Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg said a reporter's promise of confidentiality may not be worth anything when the leak involves trade secrets.
That wrongheaded decision came in a case in which Apple sought to compel several Web sites that published leaked information about upcoming products to reveal their sources. The ruling flies in the face of First Amendment guarantees and the California Shield Law, which allows journalists to keep sources confidential. . .
The ruling is deeply troubling on many levels. First of all, companies have wide latitude to determine what is a trade secret. Anything they don't want published could potentially qualify. Second, the media have long been protected when releasing leaked trade secrets, such as internal tobacco company documents. The media's role in a free society is to publish information that is accurate and of interest to the public, not to protect the commercial interests of private companies.
What's more, Kleinberg seems to indicate that he's in a position to decide what is newsworthy. Saying that "an interested public is not the same as the public interest," he suggests that information about upcoming Apple products is little more than gossip. That's a dangerous precedent. Would a leak last month about Hewlett-Packard's imminent firing of Carly Fiorina be news or mere gossip? Could a wide swath of information about private businesses become off-limits to reporters? (Link)
