Re: [dvd-discuss] CA Supreme Court hears Pavlovich Jurisdiction Challenge in DVDCCA case

[Tom <tom(at)lemuria.org>]

On Fri, Sep 06, 2002 at 02:33:44PM -0700, Bryan Taylor wrote:
> At best, the appropriate question is whether Pavlovich knew that the trade
> secret harms would impact California. Indeed it was impossible for him to know
> this, because it was not even TRUE at the time his web site posted DeCSS. The
> owner of CSS was based in Japan, not California, until a few weeks before the
> case was filed. 

Am I just being dumb or is that the killer argument if it can be
proven? "Your honour, the plaintiff requests that my client should have
been able to see into the future. He seems to have watched a few too
many of their movies."


> Moreover, the DVDCCA is a very obscure business entity. Jack
> Valenti, head of the MPAA, testified under oath he did not know who the DVDCCA
> was, so it is extremely unreasonable to expect Pavlovich to know this. 

Another good argument, though DVDCCA will probably reply that he should
have made at least a "good faith effort" to check that he doesn't harm
anyone. It'll be difficult to prove that he did.

One other argument that I think has not been properly addressed is that
AFAIK, misappropriation of a trade secret requires that you came by
your knowledge in some inappropriate way. Reverse engineering is
perfectly legal. In fact, it's the old-fashioned approach to acquiring
a trade secret.

-- 
http://web.lemuria.org/pubkey.html
pub  1024D/2D7A04F5 2002-05-16 Tom Vogt <tom@lemuria.org>
     Key fingerprint = C731 64D1 4BCF 4C20 48A4  29B2 BF01 9FA1 2D7A 04F5