Tech site could face Apple litigation

Jeff Bercovici of DailyFinance.com writes that the tech site Gizmodo could face a lawsuit from Apple for writing stories about the iPhone that it obtained for $5,000.

Bercovici writes, “Gawker Media owner Nick Denton told me Monday that his company researched the relevant case law to determine that it was in the clear before proceeding with the transaction. But after looking into the story futher, I’m far from convinced.

“I think a district attorney could make a solid criminal case that Gawker Media purchased what it should have suspected were technically stolen goods. And I think Apple’s lawyers could make an even tighter civil case that, in so doing, Gawker misappropriated trade secrets worth millions of dollars.

“At heart is the question of whether the person who found the phone made ‘reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him,’ as required by the California penal code. In its account of what happened, Gizmodo says the finder ‘asked around’ the bar where he found it, Gourmet Haus Staudt. And after realizing it was an Apple prototype, he called several numbers at the company.

“What he never did, however, was notify anyone who worked at the bar, according to its owner, Volcker Staudt. That would have been the simplest way to get the phone back to the Apple employee who lost it, who ‘called constantly trying to retrieve it’ in the days afterward, recalls Volcker. ‘The guy was pretty hectic about it.'”