Disruptions: Apple Patent Fight With Samsung Spills Some iPhone and iPad Secrets

The following is an excerpt from an article in 

The New York Times
Monday, August 06, 2012

Disruptions: Apple Patent Fight With Samsung Spills Some iPhone and iPad Secrets

By NICK BILTON

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Back in the early 1930s, a magician by the name of Horace Goldin went to court to defend his signature illusion: sawing a woman in half.

Mr. Goldin filed a lawsuit against the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company for using this magic trick in an advertisement and explaining how it worked. According to an article in The New York Times from March 1933, Mr. Goldin, who had won a patent for the illusion a decade earlier, asserted that the ad had adversely affected his ability to get people to see his shows. He asked for $50,000 in damages. (That's about $865,000 in today's dollars.)

I thought about Mr. Goldin last week as I sat in a federal courtroom here in the capital city of Silicon Valley. I listened to evidence presented in a patent lawsuit that Apple has brought against Samsung Electronics. Apple claims that Samsung copied its designs for the iPhone and the iPad.

You see, even just by filing his patent, and then using it to litigate, Mr. Goldin publicly drew attention to the secrets of his profession. Apple, by going to a jury trial to defend the patents of its most prized products, is also allowing competitors and the public to see inside one of the most secretive companies in the world.

Steven P. Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, was very much in the mold of a magician. People often spoke of being sucked into a "reality distortion field" as he pitched his new products. Anyone who closely watched those dramatic announcements may recall how he repeatedly used the word "magical" to describe his latest devices.

CA Technologies Wins Copyright Infringement & Trade Secret Action

CA Technologies Wins Copyright Infringement and Trade Secret Action Against Australia-based Independent Systems Integrators

Federal Court of Australia Judge Expected to Issue Orders to Implement Decision

ISLANDIA, NY, and SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, March 21, 2012 – CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA) today announced that the Federal Court of Australia has found Independent Systems Integrators (ISI) of Sydney, Australia violated copyright laws and breached its duty of confidentiality in developing and selling a product using intellectual property (IP) from CA Technologies CA Datacom relational database management system.

“We are pleased with the Court’s decision,” said Amy Fliegelman Olli, CA Technologies executive vice president and general counsel.  “CA Technologies will continue to vigorously protect its intellectual property and aggressively pursue any illegal use in order to protect the substantial investments we make in research and development.  Furthermore, we are committed to safeguarding the considerable investments and confidence our customers place in us when they purchase our products, solutions and services.”
    
In the next phase of the decision process, the Federal Court of Australia is expected to issue orders necessary to implement its ruling. 

The Federal Court found that ISI infringed CA Technologies copyrights by using CA Datacom code to develop and implement its 2BDB2 product.  In addition, the Court further ruled that ISI violated its duty of confidentiality by using confidential information found in the Administrator and Programmer Guides provided to CA Datacom customers to develop the ISI 2BDB2 product.

The ISI case is the second major instance in the past three years where CA Technologies has successfully taken actions to protect its intellectual property. 

In February 2009, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, CA Technologies reached a settlement with Rocket Software, Inc. resolving the company’s claims of copyright infringement and trade secret misappropriation.  As part of the settlement, Rocket has agreed to license technology from CA Technologies, including source code authored several years ago and related trade secrets that were the subject of the litigation. Further terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Chinese Official to Hear Trade Theft Tale

Excerpt from an article in The New York Times
Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Chinese Official to Hear Trade Theft Tale 

By JONATHAN WEISMAN

WASHINGTON — China’s next leader, Xi Jinping, may never have heard of American Superconductor Corporation before he arrived here Monday, but by the end of his visit United States officials hope to make the small Massachusetts wind-energy company an object lesson in the impact of Chinese trade secret theft on American business.

Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a Massachusetts Democrat, plans to raise personally with Mr. Xi the case of a company that saw 70 percent of its business evaporate last year after a Chinese partner enticed one of its employees to steal the crown jewel of its technology.

“It’s a very clear and, in our judgment, egregious, palpable demonstration of the practice that we are deeply concerned about,” Mr. Kerry said, “but it’s not the only one. There are so many things: cyberattacks, access-to-market issues, espionage, theft. These are major points of discussion between us and China.”

Both President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. warned Mr. Xi on Tuesday that they had been hearing more and more from United States businesses about intellectual property and trade secret theft, but they did not specifically mention American Superconductor. However, background material on the company’s experience was included in briefing papers distributed before the arrival in Washington of Mr. Xi’s delegation, and a top administration official said the Chinese were aware of United States frustration over the case.