Trade Secrets Beat Free Speech?

That might be the case in California.

The New York Times reports on a California trade secrets case involving the cracking of a DVD code.

The ruling reversed a decision by a California appeals court. Yet the state Supreme Court's ruling is a narrow one, legal experts said, and it mostly sets the stage for further legal scrutiny of the balance between rights of free speech and intellectual property at a time when digital copies of software, music and movies can be made and distributed effortlessly over the Internet."

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Yet Ms. Samuelson, who filed a supporting brief on behalf of Mr. Bunner, asserted that the real weakness of the suit was the trade secrets claim. Mr. Bunner, she noted, did not create the encryption-cracking program, he violated no contract with the DVD Copy Control Association, and by the time he posted the software on a Web site hundreds of others had done the same thing.

I say Mr. Samuelson has a good argument - under Indiana law.

To read more of my posts on trade secrets, click here.

If you are in Indiana and have a trade secrets problem, do give me a call.