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| Raymond Disputes Trade Secrets Claim |
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Monday, June 23 2003 @ 04:20 AM EDT
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Eric Raymond claims to have 60 people willing to sign affidavits that they had "read access to proprietary Unix source code... under circumstances where either no non-disclosure agreement was required or whatever non-disclosure agreement [they] had was not enforced." PCWorld asked an IP lawyer if this would help IBM's case:
"The No Secrets site might help IBM's case, depending on how Raymond's Linux users got their access to the code, says Jeffrey Neuburger, a technology lawyer with Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner, who has been following the SCO-IBM case.
"If users legitimately had access to the System V source code, it 'would certainly undermine [SCO's] trade secret and misappropriation claims,' Neuburger says. 'If these 60 people that have signed the affidavits have stolen the source code that wouldn't help.'"
The article doesn't mention it, but it is worth pointing out that violating someone's trade secret can be a criminal as well as a civil offense. Raymond states "You take no risk by telling me you have had read access to UNIX source code." That isn't true. If anyone stole the source code or gained illegal access, they are taking a risk by signing up, for sure. I doubt anyone did, but to say that there is no risk is not accurate. Here's just one article to demonstrate.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 24 2003 @ 02:00 AM EDT |
Getting access to a trade secret can not be an offence if it happens passively:
imagine that you receive a letter in the mail containing a CD with the latest
UnixWare source code.
It can't be an offence to bcc ESR on your e-mail to Caldera on how they want to
have the CD returned.
MathFox[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 24 2003 @ 12:03 PM EDT |
| Yes, there are certainly circumstances where no problems would ensue. But there
are others where it could. My point was and remains: don't step into a legal
arena without checking with a lawyer and ideally having one to represent your
interests. This isn't an area for amateurs.
The law is a difficult and very complex field. It is deceptively
understandable, as SCO is demonstrating. You can think you are on solid ground,
only to find out you are sinking in quicksand. So, to give legal advice when
you aren't a lawyer is hazardous to those who follow your advice. Partly that
is because it's not like math, where one and one is reliably two. In the law,
it's more like chess. There are definite rules, but you still can't predict the
outcome in every instance, because there are humans in the picture. Also,
although lawyers speak English (in the US), the words don't always mean what
they do in a nonlegal context. This can lead to real misundertandings. It's a
kind of code. I personally would never sign anything that put me in the middle
of a lawsuit without first speaking to my own lawyer, someone representing my
interests. And I hope no one else does either.
pj[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 22 2003 @ 10:40 AM EDT |
Unless I completely misundestand the law, simply having had
access to someone else's trade secret is never actionable.
You have to have *conveyed access to someone else* before
you're exposed. And yes, I checked with a lawyer.
Eric S. Raymond[ Reply to This | # ]
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