6 ms·

The case has lots and lots of media attention. And it may be just me, but the whole thing seems to be a pretty easy case: The California law regarding lost it

by jvdh 17y ago

The case has lots and lots of media attention. And it may be just me, but the whole thing seems to be a pretty easy case: The California law regarding lost items is pretty clear. If you think it's stolen, you have to report it. The website shows a story admitting to buying the prototype for $5000 and showing lots of pictures holding it, disassembling, etc. They know who owned it, and you're not going to pay $5000 for something that you're not completely sure of.

sabat 17y ago
But it was not stolen: the Apple employee who had been in possession of the prototype, Gray Powell, admits that he got drunk and accidentally left the phone at the bar. It was not stolen. It was lost.
- evgen 17y ago
  When the finder failed to take adequate steps to return the phone and then sold it to another party it was no longer lost, it was stolen.
  - sigzero 17y ago
    I fail to understand why people don't get that point.
    - allwein 17y ago
      I don't understand it either. Especially since everyone agrees that an analogous case is theft. "I walk into a coffee shop and see an unattended laptop sitting on one of the tables, so I decide to close it up and take it home with me." Nobody I've talked to seems to think that this scenario is okay or consider the laptop "lost". So I don't know why people are so quick to consider this iphone lost.
  - mechanical_fish 17y ago
    You even left out the part where they disassembled it, which crosses the line even more blatantly.
    - michaelcampbell 16y ago
      How so? IF some other piece of material property was stolen (which was the only complaint here, no? I could be wrong), disassembling it doesn't add to the charges. Or did Apple (or the police) assert that IP and/or trade secrets were stolen, in addition to (or exclusion of) the phone itself?
  - MaxwellKennerly 17y ago
    Maybe so. But that doesn't answer the question as to why this stolen phone -- apart from the millions of other items stolen in California and reported to the police -- deserved special treatment by law enforcement, and warranted the use of unusual and aggressive measures to obtain information about it. It's still just a single phone, a phone that's been returned to its owner. Maybe Apple was damaged by the loss in a way the law recognizes. If so, then they can file a civil lawsuit just like everyone else with a grievance against someone else. The part that's troubling here is how, if anyone else reading this post reported to the police that an employee had lost a ready-for-market prototype and that a blog had published pictures of it and then returned it, the police would politely file the report at the bottom of the pile and then get back to pursuing real crimes. Apple, however, gets an unannounced seizure of a journalist's home and work computers. Such preferential treatment demands an explanation.
    - app 16y ago
      Because stealing someone's iPhone off a restaurant table isn't a felony, it's petty theft. You're trivializing what the new iPhone is. It represented millions of dollars of R&D and contained proprietary information so is therefor potentially protected under trade secret laws. There's no functional difference between publicizing the physical phone or it's blueprints: you're competition knows what you're up to (and can't sell yet) and your customers are going to forgo buying your current product.
      - MaxwellKennerly 16y ago
        As I put in the post, "A trade-secret claim based on readily observable material is a bust." IDX Systems Corp. v. Epic Systems Corp., 285 F. 3d 581, 584 (7th Cir. 2002). The most Gawker revealed was (1) features readily observable on the outside and (2) information printed on the components when the device was opened. Obviously, none that would be considered a "trade secret" once the iPhone was up for sale on the market. Can a feature list be considered a trade secretly few months before the items released? That's a tough one, particularly because Apple itself released this iPhone into the wild, where it was found by a third party. It's not like Gawker snuck into Apple's campus and found some research for products contemplated way in the future, product so far off that Apple had not yet filed a patent on the technology. (By way of background, the whole purpose of trade secret law is to protect things that a person doesn't want to disclose publicly by patenting. Almost by definition, a trade secret has to be something that was patentable, and so far nothing on the prototype iPhone looks like it was patentable.) All of which brings us back to the central point: it's debatable if Apple even suffered a legally-cognizable injury by virtue of someone bringing publicity to a device Apple, through its employee, left out in the wild. In light of that, and in light of the serious concerns about journalistic shield, REACT should have shown caution. Instead, they took the most aggressive approach they could have.
  - michaelcampbell 16y ago
    I thought steps WERE taken, and subsequently rebuffed. And as soon as the "owner" and the eventual party of possession were aware of each other, the device was returned.
  - sabat 16y ago
    By whose definition? I have doubts about yours.
    - evgen 16y ago
      By the definition provided in California Penal Code, section 485. By the further refinement of such in section 484.1 of same. According to section 487.1(a) the correct term for this event is grand larceny. Try reading California Civil Code section 2080 for more information about the requirements placed upon a finder of "lost" property.
- mustpax 17y ago
  I don't remember Gray Powell ever making a statement to that effect. That was Gizmodo side of the story.
  - sabat 16y ago
    http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/apple-engineer-gray-powell-lost-iphone/story?id=10430224 http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/apple-engineer-gray-powell-... Gray admits he left the phone at the bar, and then came back later (presumably sober, the next day) and was upset when it wasn't there. He may as well have given it away. The phone was not stolen. It was carelessly lost.
    - Lazlo_Nibble 16y ago
      Powell doesn't "admit" that he was drunk, or that he left the phone at the bar, at any point in that story.
Freebytes 17y ago
I was viewing this as a positive situation for Apple. They had lots of free advertising, and I actually thought the 'lost phone' was on purpose to generate buzz. Nonetheless, entering into the homes of journalists to find out information about a stolen phone is bad publicity for Apple, and they should have considered the incident over after the phone was returned.

by jvdh 17y ago

sabat 17y ago

But it was not stolen: the Apple employee who had been in possession of the prototype, Gray Powell, admits that he got drunk and accidentally left the phone at the bar. It was not stolen. It was lost.

evgen 17y ago
When the finder failed to take adequate steps to return the phone and then sold it to another party it was no longer lost, it was stolen.
- sigzero 17y ago
  I fail to understand why people don't get that point.
  - allwein 17y ago
    I don't understand it either. Especially since everyone agrees that an analogous case is theft. "I walk into a coffee shop and see an unattended laptop sitting on one of the tables, so I decide to close it up and take it home with me." Nobody I've talked to seems to think that this scenario is okay or consider the laptop "lost". So I don't know why people are so quick to consider this iphone lost.
- mechanical_fish 17y ago
  You even left out the part where they disassembled it, which crosses the line even more blatantly.
  - michaelcampbell 16y ago
    How so? IF some other piece of material property was stolen (which was the only complaint here, no? I could be wrong), disassembling it doesn't add to the charges. Or did Apple (or the police) assert that IP and/or trade secrets were stolen, in addition to (or exclusion of) the phone itself?
- MaxwellKennerly 17y ago
  Maybe so. But that doesn't answer the question as to why this stolen phone -- apart from the millions of other items stolen in California and reported to the police -- deserved special treatment by law enforcement, and warranted the use of unusual and aggressive measures to obtain information about it. It's still just a single phone, a phone that's been returned to its owner. Maybe Apple was damaged by the loss in a way the law recognizes. If so, then they can file a civil lawsuit just like everyone else with a grievance against someone else. The part that's troubling here is how, if anyone else reading this post reported to the police that an employee had lost a ready-for-market prototype and that a blog had published pictures of it and then returned it, the police would politely file the report at the bottom of the pile and then get back to pursuing real crimes. Apple, however, gets an unannounced seizure of a journalist's home and work computers. Such preferential treatment demands an explanation.
  - app 16y ago
    Because stealing someone's iPhone off a restaurant table isn't a felony, it's petty theft. You're trivializing what the new iPhone is. It represented millions of dollars of R&D and contained proprietary information so is therefor potentially protected under trade secret laws. There's no functional difference between publicizing the physical phone or it's blueprints: you're competition knows what you're up to (and can't sell yet) and your customers are going to forgo buying your current product.
    - MaxwellKennerly 16y ago
      As I put in the post, "A trade-secret claim based on readily observable material is a bust." IDX Systems Corp. v. Epic Systems Corp., 285 F. 3d 581, 584 (7th Cir. 2002). The most Gawker revealed was (1) features readily observable on the outside and (2) information printed on the components when the device was opened. Obviously, none that would be considered a "trade secret" once the iPhone was up for sale on the market. Can a feature list be considered a trade secretly few months before the items released? That's a tough one, particularly because Apple itself released this iPhone into the wild, where it was found by a third party. It's not like Gawker snuck into Apple's campus and found some research for products contemplated way in the future, product so far off that Apple had not yet filed a patent on the technology. (By way of background, the whole purpose of trade secret law is to protect things that a person doesn't want to disclose publicly by patenting. Almost by definition, a trade secret has to be something that was patentable, and so far nothing on the prototype iPhone looks like it was patentable.) All of which brings us back to the central point: it's debatable if Apple even suffered a legally-cognizable injury by virtue of someone bringing publicity to a device Apple, through its employee, left out in the wild. In light of that, and in light of the serious concerns about journalistic shield, REACT should have shown caution. Instead, they took the most aggressive approach they could have.
- michaelcampbell 16y ago
  I thought steps WERE taken, and subsequently rebuffed. And as soon as the "owner" and the eventual party of possession were aware of each other, the device was returned.
- sabat 16y ago
  By whose definition? I have doubts about yours.
  - evgen 16y ago
    By the definition provided in California Penal Code, section 485. By the further refinement of such in section 484.1 of same. According to section 487.1(a) the correct term for this event is grand larceny. Try reading California Civil Code section 2080 for more information about the requirements placed upon a finder of "lost" property.
mustpax 17y ago
I don't remember Gray Powell ever making a statement to that effect. That was Gizmodo side of the story.
- sabat 16y ago
  http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/apple-engineer-gray-powell-lost-iphone/story?id=10430224 http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/apple-engineer-gray-powell-... Gray admits he left the phone at the bar, and then came back later (presumably sober, the next day) and was upset when it wasn't there. He may as well have given it away. The phone was not stolen. It was carelessly lost.
  - Lazlo_Nibble 16y ago
    Powell doesn't "admit" that he was drunk, or that he left the phone at the bar, at any point in that story.

Freebytes 17y ago

I was viewing this as a positive situation for Apple. They had lots of free advertising, and I actually thought the 'lost phone' was on purpose to generate buzz. Nonetheless, entering into the homes of journalists to find out information about a stolen phone is bad publicity for Apple, and they should have considered the incident over after the phone was returned.