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.