Samsung faces sanctions over leak of confidential Apple documents
tech.fortune.cnn.com
tech.fortune.cnn.com
Still, these documents are licensing agreements that implement and define the extent of a state granted monopoly. There is no plausible non-corrupt reason to allow them to be kept secret. Any serious effort at open government would require private companies invested with the power of law to make these documents public as soon as they're written.
The patent office should require all contracts that involve patent assignment, licensing, and revenue sharing to be deposited at the patent office for public access. These companies have been granted a privilege by the state at a cost to the freedom of every citizen and are responsible for how they use that privilege. The public has a right to know whether those privileges are really being used in the public interest as we are so often told.
In every case, the public is better off if competitors know what sort of value and advantage companies are getting from patents. The whole point of the system is supposed to depend on public disclosure of inventions and their use and value compensating the public. Hiding the terms of contracts is an abuse of the very supposed nature of the patent bargain.
The continued sealing of documents in patent cases offends justice and integrity. Even the judge in this case agrees and has tried to make more of these documents in question public. So far the corrupt Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit hasn't been cooperative in reducing secrecy and opening up evidence to the public in patent cases.
Perhaps the parent poster should note that and clarify the fact they're speaking about patent law broadly. Maybe by prefacing the post with something along the lines of "Samsung shouldn't violate court orders. Still, "
http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/10/sanctions-loom-large-sams...
Apple sent confidential information to an outside attorney, marking it as confidential. The attorney then used that confidential material in making other material, not rightly redacting or not including the material only they were to see, then sending it to many people at Samsung.
Beyond that, such is the whole reason for discovery in things like this.
It is written as such on FOSS patents. Apple supplied the documents, David Teece (Samsung's witness and a UCB prof) compiled main clauses of the documents into a report, the report was then sent to Samsung's external attorneys (Quinn Emmanuel), who uploaded them on to an internal Samsung FTP server, then around 50 executives were notified one by one to access that report.
Samsung illegally distributed information that was only disclosed under court protection for the purpose of a trial to it's executives, who used it to gain an advantage in negotiation.
They did precisely what the court did not permit them to do.
> Beyond that, such is the whole reason for discovery in things like this.
Either you don't understand what Samsung have done, or you don't understand what discovery is, because obtaining trade secrets is clearly not the reason for it.
Samsung, it seems (again, this is why the judge is demanding discovery) didn't actually leak the information -- an outside law firm did. It is entirely possible Samsung (meaning specific executives) was simply ignorant about their right to have that information when it dropped in their FTP folder, as openly stating it and flaunting it in the face of a competitor virtually guaranteed that what is happening now would happen.
EDIT: clarification.
EDIT: Okay, you edited your bizarre comment to something that can be replied to. You understand the concept of an outside council, right? The outside council works for a client but they are beholden to the law and restrictions of the court, with their entire firm lying in the balance. If you think Samsung just whispered kindly do them and they broke the law and professional credibility (again, if it was them), you don't understand law firms.
Quinn Emmanuel is a reputable firm. I find it hard to believe that this was an intentional error.
EDIT: In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a card-carrying salary-drawing member of Team AAPL.
So no, since they acknowledged it as a leak it's not possible that Samsung thought it was entitled to the information.
[edit: response to ad-hominem removed now that the ad-hominem has been silently deleted]
Samsung (meaning executives, not their legal team) may very well have thought that the information "leaked" to them, in a completely legal, matter of business fashion. Again, the outside party is apparently (crazy to wait for due process, but thus far this is the belief of the judge) the one who broached confidentiality requirements, such that Samsung executives may not have even known what they were getting.
The fact that an executive so brazenly gloated about this information makes it more likely this was not an intentional breach of the law. Maybe it was, but it would be a very stupid breach.
Whilst you're right that the judge has yet to rule, in light of their past behavior, I find your willingness to construct a scenario in which they are innocent, despite it being in contradiction of the evidence we do currently have, to be bizarrely generous.
It's why we can't have sensible conversations; people make asinine comment like that.
Oh how I wish it wasn't. However as we've seen on HN for years, there are people who have a bizarre predisposition to wave a flag and claim a team. It turns the conversation into a partisan mockery of overly aggrieved victims.
The fact that you think that says much about you.
Since lying and cheating are pervasive ethics at Samsung (see: recent benchmarking results), Samsung of course got their hands on a copy of this agreements in order to help negotiate negotiate their own deals with Nokia. Nokia told the court.
Samsung and their firm and busy lying to the court and hiding. However, the court has subpoena powers. At minimum Samsung's external legal firm stands to be censured.
Oh come on, this is silly.
You don't think Apple manipulate benchmarks and statistics?
Or deny product faults and quietly settle years later e.g. iPhone 4 Antenna?
Or how about e-book price fixing?!!
It's ridiculous that people always assume foreign companies lie, cheat and steal, whereas homegrown companies are more kosher than a rabbi. The same thing happens in sport and politics of course. I guess humans just can't lose that tribal mentality.
With the exception of Apple and Motorola, literally every single OEM we’ve
worked with ships (or has shipped) at least one device that runs this silly
CPU optimization.
Didn't they hold an entire press conference, invite everyone and say (essentially) "we don't think there's a problem; most phones have similar issues; to anyone complaining, we're offering free iPhone cases" ?
That doesn't sound like "quietly settling" to me.
I'm sure there are dozens of millions of users that can't make a phone call because of the antenna problem. I wonder why they don't complain.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung#Controversies 2. http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/30/3709688/samsung-25-years-...
+Samsung said it needed some confidential documents from Apple for its legal defense.
+The judge ordered that Apple must give the confidential documents to Samsung's lawyers, but that the lawyers couldn't share them
+Samsung's lawyers shared the documents with the company
+Now Samsung has illegally obtained knowledge of secret information that Apple and its partners had
It sounds like it's their legal team who are at fault. Did Samsung break into the law offices and steal this information?
If I were king, I would revoke the right to practice law for at least 5 years for the attorneys involved, a $1 Billion or 50% of that yearly earnings fine for Samsung and a order not to use the info illegally obtained. The last one is maybe useless, but still, you never know, let them wonder if Apple might sue them.
Samsung has to pay for what their legal team did, right or wrong. After all they hired and trust them with everything.
That's reasonable, I guess, I mean the law firm representing Samsung did screw up, I can understand punishing them.
> a $1 Billion or 50% of that yearly earnings fine for Samsung
Those pants...why are you putting them on your head?
> Samsung has to pay for what their legal team did, right or wrong. After all they hired and trust them with everything.
Yes, they hired a law firm. They have to pay the law firm the amount that the two parties agreed on. Now, the law firm screwed up. However, unless you have evidence of wrongdoing on Samsung's part, this is just foaming at the mouth crazy talk. If anything, Samsung was also wronged by their law firm by being put in this position.
Mr. Melin recounts that to prove to Nokia that he knew the confidential terms of the Apple-Nokia license, Dr. Ahn recited the terms of the license, and even went so far as to tell Nokia that “all information leaks.” Mr. Melin also reports that Dr. Ahn and Samsung then proceeded to use his knowledge of the terms of the Apple- Nokia license to gain an unfair advantage in their negotiations with Nokia, by asserting that the Apple-Nokia terms should dictate terms of a Samsung-Nokia license.' http://allthingsd.com/20131003/apple-accuses-samsung-of-shar...
Even among liars and cheaters, Samsung stands out.
What they are accused of is deeply illegal, and that isn't going to change.
Apple hasn't done anything illegal and their patents aren't 'fake'. If they were fake, why wouldn't Samsung have had them reviewed?
It seems as though you are trying to defend Samsung by smearing Apple.
I'm not defending Samsung. They both are worth each other here. Apple started this idiocy first though - no one asked them to be patent jerks to begin with. When one crook is being bitten by another crook in a crooked fashion, because the first did something crooked to the second first, then the first one should look in a mirror, before pointing fingers to the second.
You also seem to be saying that Samsung should be allowed to abuse the court process as a way to steal secrets because Apple sued them, even though Apple won the case.
I'm sorry, but you are defending Samsung.
Allowed? I didn't say anything about allowed.
Anyway, Samsung should invalidate these patents for good. Otherwise Apple will use them against someone else next time.
Take the word "patent" out of the picture, and you still have very unethical and possibly illegal behavior. The information shared was confidential contracts between Apple and other companies. This information was marked as confidential for Samsung's lawyers only, not for Samsung. Someone gave them to Samsung.
This would still happen with just about any business suit that could involve trade secrets.
Your comments are not only useless here but outright pointless. Apple's tactics with patents have zero bearing to this article. I think its time to remove hacker news from my daily reading list like reddit a few years ago. The partisan/biased comments lately about things like patents are starting to get beyond ludicrous.
The eternal september effect is starting to wear me out on discussion sites. I'm not sure how you fix the problem though, or even if its fixable. Meh, back to work, least that is productive and useful unlike this very comment and the one before.