

Samsung faces sanctions over leak of confidential Apple documents - gibwell
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/10/03/apple-samsung-sanctions-grewal/

======
WildUtah
Samsung shouldn't violate court orders.

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.

~~~
gibwell
This issue has nothing to do with whether patent law is correct or not. It's
about Samsung obtaining documents illegally.

~~~
forgottenpass
_It 's about Samsung obtaining documents illegally._

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, "

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iamshs
So essentially apple's confidential patent agreements with Nokia, Sharp,
Philips, and Ericsson are now compromised and known to Samsung through their
external attorney. And allegedly, they were using them as a leverage against
Nokia. Fantastic company right there. Fine the violators incredibly heavily,
and stem this unethical behavior.

[http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/10/sanctions-loom-large-
sams...](http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/10/sanctions-loom-large-samsung-
execs-were.html)

~~~
corresation
I'm not sure which is worse -- FOSS Patents or Philip Elmer-DeWitt. Both add
such narrative noise and partisan detritus to the commentary that neither are
worthwhile sources of information on this.

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.

~~~
gibwell
Are you trying to minimize the seriousness of what had been done here?

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.

~~~
corresation
Discovery for _this_ issue, gibwell (a 3-day old account that already has
pages upon pages of attacks on Samsung, Google, and Amazon. Such a mystery who
you imagine your team is).

 _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.

~~~
cube13
Uh, the "outside law firm" is Samsung's council. They're the ones representing
Samsung in court. If you seriously think that Samsung is an innocent third
party in this, you're completely mistaken. The lawyers going to face
sanctions, as will Samsung.

EDIT: clarification.

~~~
corresation
How you came to the conclusions that led you to write your comment absolutely
baffles me.

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.

~~~
jfb
It could have easily been a simple error in redaction. Knowing how information
is disseminated in large companies, it's also easily possible that the actual
source of the information to the Samsung execs had been obscured.

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.

------
yalogin
Samsung has always come across as a company really willing to cheat without
hesitation. Even then I am surprised with this.

------
smtddr
Explain to me like I'm 5 years old. What happened here? I understand data was
leaked, but I don't know why the author is "shocked" or "disappointed"(in
who?). Why is this such a big deal and "extremely" illegal? How does this
impact the companies involved?

~~~
x0x0
as part of the apple-samsung lawsuit, apple produced apparently incredibly
business sensitive licensing agreements, some of which where with Nokia. In
order to avoid samsung using this to their advantage/letting samsung go on a
fishing expedition, the agreement was apple's documents would only go to
apple's lawyers and samsung's external legal firm. Samsung's external lawyers
had a duty to avoid giving this knowledge to their employers.

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.

~~~
yapcguy
> Since lying and cheating are pervasive ethics at Samsung (see: recent
> benchmarking results)

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.

~~~
Avenger42
> deny product faults and quietly settle years later e.g. iPhone 4 Antenna

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.

~~~
giovannibajo1
The very same iPhone 4 has been sold for 28 months, up until two weeks ago.

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.

------
shmerl
When will Samsung already invalidate those patents for good? They have prior
art.

~~~
gibwell
How is that relevant to the linked article?

~~~
shmerl
It would simply make such articles irrelevant :) Since in essence those
patents were never valid to begin with. Samsung is of course wrong with sneaky
tactics. But so is Apple with using fake patents.

~~~
gibwell
Even if Apple's patents were invalidated it would do nothing to excuse what
you are calling 'sneaky tactics' by Samsung.

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.

~~~
shmerl
In this case, Apple's patents are fake, because there is clear prior art.
Samsung tried to use that defense, but the jury was really weird on that one.
No idea why they aren't proceeding with invalidating them further.

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.

~~~
gibwell
If the jury didn't agree that the prior art was clear, then the prior art
obviously was not clear. So really you're just saying that you don't agree
with the jury.

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.

~~~
shmerl
The jury was incompetent. Prior art is there. Jury dismissed it with
completely invalid arguments which demonstrated that they had no clue what
they were dealing with (patent law). And jury didn't even follow guidelines
set for them for this case (which were intended to make them understand
application of patent law better).

Allowed? I didn't say anything about allowed.

~~~
gibwell
You seem to claim to understand the law better than the judge.

~~~
shmerl
The judge pointed out that jury didn't follow the guidelines. It seems that
you didn't really follow the case.

Anyway, Samsung should invalidate these patents for good. Otherwise Apple will
use them against someone else next time.

