This Week's Trade Secrets Litigation Case - Marvell Semiconductor

What can I say? Silence is golden? Loose lips sink law suits as well as ships?

Lawyers Say Embarrassing Voice Mail of Marvell GC May Have Been Edited | ABA Journal - Law News Now

Lawyers for Marvell Semiconductor say the tape should be tossed because it may have been edited, the Recorder reports. The company’s forensic expert says there are several instances where there is a complete loss of signal—a finding consistent with editing.

The lawyers caught on tape were Matthew Gloss, then the general counsel of Marvell Semiconductor, and one of its intellectual property lawyers, Eric Janofsky, the Recorder says. The lawyers and an engineer had phoned a lawyer for rival Jasmine Networks, and left a voice mail message when she didn't answer. Jasmine had been in negotiations to sell its technology and engineers to Marvell, and the details were protected by a nondisclosure pact, according to a 2001 account of the recording in Fortune.

Trial Featuring Infamous Marvell GC Voicemail Set for Next Week

We cringe every time we think about Jasmine Networks's trade secrets case against Marvell Semiconductor. At its heart is a recording of then-Marvell general counsel Matthew Gloss, patent attorney Eric Janofsky, and VP of engineering Kaushik Banjeree that has helped secure them a place in Silicon Valley infamy. Eight years ago the three rang up a Jasmine in-house lawyer, who didn't answer. When the call went to voicemail, Gloss left a message and hung up. Except he didn't. With the Jasmine phone system recording their conversation, Gloss, Janofsky, and Banjeree proceeded to keep talking....about stealing Jasmine's trade secrets! At one point, Janofsky said, "If we took that IP on the pretense of just evaluating it, and put in in our product..." Yikes!

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Mind you, Elinson writes, Latham's arguments don't "cast much doubt on the part where they're talking about stealing the other guy's IP." On top of that, Jasmine's lawyer, William McGrane of McGrane Greenfield, told Ellinson that the appeals court has already denied Latham's challenge to the recording. "They are fighting an uphill battle," McGrane said.

I am not even sure that I care whether the recording was doctored or not. I am old enough to remember the Nixon tape transcripts and have seen other people forget that their telephone was not disconnected (especially embarrassing to a friend of mine who had not realized her cell phone could be dialed without her fingers touching the call button). Between those experiences, I have a healthy fear of telephones and recording devices. I am only surprised it is not more widely shared.