> According to analyst941’s post, Apple might take legal action against both the former employee and the tipster.
Assuming the tipster is not under any NDA, is there anything Apple could take them to court for?
Assuming the tipster is not under any NDA, is there anything Apple could take them to court for?
In some jurisdictions (including mine, but I do not know California law) there is the civil tort of Tortious Interference, where Parties A & B have a contract, and Party C improperly pushes/induces B to break their contract with A. A could then have a claim against C. What counts is specific, some sort of financial carrot/stick commonly. The former is obvious, for the latter a classic/textbook example would be if you have a contract to sell 500 foobars to A. Meanwhile C is planning to start selling foobars too, and also has lots of existing business with A that is very valuable to A. So C threatens A, saying they'll stop doing business with them unless they breach their contract with you. There is no explicit bribing or payment there, merely denial of future payment, but that could still be a case for tortious interference.
But it's very possible that there's nothing here actionable (or the tort may not be there in CA), and this is just someone using a very generous "might take legal action". If this goes to court Apple would do discovery and check I assume, but it'd be fact dependent.
Edit: sibling comments mention there is also some specific CA law regarding trade secrets.
If B comes to C, then there's going to be a hard time showing that C was interfering.
For groups like Wikileaks, it helps that US government documents and laws, with limited exceptions, are not copyrighted or copyrightable in the US. So when they report a huge NSA scandal and publish those documents, the government can't claim copyright infringement... but they will tear the place apart to find the leaker. And of course, spy on the reporter extremely closely for any possible legal slip-up no matter how small (or, arguably, if they hate the reporter enough, make something up).
Folks below were also discussing criminal, which strikes me as unlikely but not at all impossible.
(Can you tell I'm a non-practicing lawyer?)
> California Trade Secrets Act (2022) sections 3426 to 3426.11 of the California Civil Code
> (a) "Improper means" includes theft, bribery, misrepresentation, breach or inducement of a breach of a duty to maintain secrecy, or espionage through electronic or other means. Reverse engineering or independent derivation alone shall not be considered improper means.
> (b) "Misappropriation" means:
> (1) Acquisition of a trade secret of another by a person who knows or has reason to know that the trade secret was acquired by improper means; or(2) Disclosure or use of a trade secret of another without express or implied consent by a person who A) Used improper means to acquire knowledge of the trade secret; or(B) At the time of disclosure or use, knew or had reason to know that his or her knowledge of the trade secret was i) Derived from or through a person who had utilized improper means to acquire it;(ii) Acquired under circumstances giving rise to a duty to maintain its secrecy or limit its use; or(iii) Derived from or through a person who owed a duty to the person seeking relief to maintain its secrecy or limit its use; or(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.
It sounds to me like that would incriminate the tipster as well, if the leaked information counts as a trade secret at least, regardless of whether the former employee knew about it or not.
[1] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/farewell-message.238918...
I don't know if this changes the legal situation any, but it has certainly already (assuming the tipster is honest) led to negative consequences for them: their sister lost her job because of them, and is now no longer speaking to them.
> Apple also requires its employees to sign nondisclosure agreements, which forbid the signees from discussing secret projects with unauthorized people. That includes other Apple employees — and most certainly anyone outside the company.