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Comment by nailer | Hacker News Reader

> trigger any thoughts about trade secrets

What? I don't think not returning the device immediately when Apple asked for it was right, but Gizmodo aren't obligated to protect Apple's trade secrets. Nobody is but Apple. Do you want every rumor site to be shut down?

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Arguably they are, under the Uniform trade Secrets Act (which is CA law):

"... (b) Misappropriation" means: ... (2) Disclosure or use of a trade secret of another without express or implied consent by a person who: ... (C) Before a material change of his or her position, knew or had reason to know that it was a trade secret and that knowledge of it had been acquired by accident or mistake.

In detail - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1286907

Interesting & upmodded. I didn't know that knowledge acquired by accident was protected from disclosure by those to whom the info has been revealed. Consider me educated.

I find it pretty despicable they made no honest attempt to get the prototype back to Apple. Until they posted actual information they could've returned it to Apple and I'm sure Apple would've reimbursed them the $5K for the phone and possibly given them future preference for the good deed.

This is "Finder's keepers, loser's weepers" hiding behind freedom of press. It isn't by any means in the territory of whistle blowing. And you certainly don't have to steal in order to post an opinion. Suppose I find someone's credit card and I want to laugh at the silliness of the design on the card, do I really need to post pictures of the card along with the 16 digit number, expiration date, and security number before giving it back to them and hiding behind "Freedom of the Press"?

> I find it pretty despicable they made no honest attempt to get the prototype back to Apple.

Apparently they did, and were ignored. Nobody has come up with anything that refutes this so far.

I look at it as: someone made an innocent mistake losing a phone, someone found a phone and called a company, Apple's bureaucracy fucked up and didn't respond as soon as it should have.

Wonder if sjobs@apple.com with attached pictures would've worked. An honest effort isn't "Oh, we called and employee # 1034434393 was clueless." It's on par with a lost wallet. They had all the information.

Unless you diligently read "the letters from steve jobs", you probably wouldn't even know he answers emails.

Though, I upvote you, because all this time, I thought it was steve.jobs@apple.com :/

Googling for "Steve Jobs email" turns up a huge number of references.

My memory could be off but wasn't it the guy who found the device and sold it to Apple that supposedly made the effort to return it?

> sold it to Apple

Did you mean Gizmodo? Or am I completely out of the loop on this one?

nope… you're right. I mistyped that.

If that were true, then how did they so easily contact the guy who lost it and out him after the original post detailing the phone? Conceivably they could have called him before they printed the story about him.

"Apparently they did"

Nope. He had Gray Powell's information but didn't contact him. He took it from the bar and then didn't check back, despite that being the obvious first place it would be looked for. He didn't take it to the police, despite that being both common sense and the law.

Instead, he claims he tried calling a public apple number or two and then sold it.

From what I've been told it was Gizmodo who pieced together Gray Powells identity. The finder knew part of the info, Gizmodo did some detective work to find the rest.

Again, I'm not quite sure the californian police care items left by drunk people in public places.

How do trade secrets even enter into this? They're planning on selling these phones all over the world. How could just possession of one be regarded as violating trade secrets?

Because in hardware IP travels with the machine. Opening one, potentially reverse-engineering it, or even just looking at it revealed quite a bit of information (for exemple the famous forward-facing camera, that we were waiting for on the 3GS last year), which were trade secrets of Apple until they were publicly revealed by Gizmodo. That's clearly against the law.

It's a trade secret until Apple announces it. Obviously business plans become public eventually, the secret portion is before it becomes public.

I kind of agree. The trade secrets would be, (maybe) the design (which was leaked by Engadget a day earlier), and the added features (a front facing camera??).

Maybe the California DA didn't know the next iPhone had a front-facing camera, but anyone who would have read the Gizmodo story probably did.

Plus, Gruber told us: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/03/29/wsj

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