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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1402
Should Apple Go After Lopez?
By Remy Davison, Insanely Great Mac
December 16th 2002
The costs of industrial espionage are the real issue here.
Last week Apple filed suit against former contractor, Jose Lopez. Cupertino is seeking
exemplary damages and legal costs, among other things, from their former employee. But
an article at IT Director asks 'should Apple bother'?
The story argues that Apple 'can't take its own medicine', having accidentally or
deliberately leaked confidential material in the past, and that "If there is any
justice in the World the guy will get away with a minor rap on the knuckles - so why
is Apple even bothering?"
Just coincidentally, in 1992, a man named Jose Ignacio Lopez de Arriortua, a fcrmer GM
executive, was charged with industrial espionage when he moved to Volkswagen. General
Motors indentifed 1,100 documents allegedly stolen worth a purported $44 billion. GM,
being kind of global, got the European courts into action.
How much do rumors hurt Apple? How much of a jump do competitors get on Cupertino if
they know what Engineering is up to six, twelve months in advance?
It's almost a dead certainty that, had details of Apple's LCD iMac leaked out 12
months in advance, a PC knockoff could have been produced fairly quickly - before
Apple could bring iMac to market, most likely.
Is it important that Lopez allegedly took schematics and images of the new Power Macs
and published them on the internet? Yes, because it's not what he allegedly stole, but
that they were allegedly stolen.
Industrial espionage may not have the same impact upon Apple that it does on GM, but
the principle is the same. It's theft of intellectual property, of
commercial-in-confidence documents which may financially or otherwise materially
benefit a competitor. Apple suffers loss and injury as a consequence.
How does this sit with the publication of rumors? We can discern some differences.
While IGM does report some rumors published at other sites, it does not originate
rumors or request confidential information. On occasion, we are privy to information
in advance, but do not publish it, on the understanding that the information is
supplied in confidence and is not intended for publication.
Apple - and others, such as Adobe - have made their position fairly clear: they
tolerate rumor sites (which, let's face it, whet the appetite with tantalizing tidbits
about Apple's possible future products). When something a firm views as stepping over
the line is published - as occurred recently at ThinkSecret with Adobe requesting
removal of material, sites usually comply. Apple has done the same thing on a number
of occasions,
Cupertino occasionally demonstrates its displeasure at idle speculation by, for
instance, withholding press passes to MacWorld for sites which land on Apple Legal's
blacklist (witness the GraphicPower fiasco this year).
But the bottom line is that Apple and Adobe could shut rumor sites down in a minute if
they wanted to. The point is, they don't unless they put a big corporation's nose
seriously out of joint.
We agree with IT Director's article on one point: the timing of this legal action
against Lopez in the run up to MWSF sends a signal to the Mac web community: watch it.
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