Re: [dvd-discuss] Bunner wins DeCSS trade secret appeal

[Seth David Schoen <schoen(at)loyalty.org>]

Bryan Taylor writes:

> Barr-Mullin, Inc. v. Browning, 108 N.C. App. 590, 424 S.E.2d 226 (1993).
> 
> Plaintiff formerly employed Defendant as a software developer to create "a
> lumber optimization system" to maximize the amount of lumber cut from each log.
> After leaving Plaintiff's employ, Defendant developed and marketed competing
> software. Plaintiff brought suit, alleging misappropriation of trade secrets
> contained in the software source code, and moved for a preliminary injunction.
> Defendant argued that the software could not contain trade secrets since it was
> widely distributed in object code form, which it was possible to reverse
> engineer. The ourt concluded that distribution in object code form alone did
> not negate trade secret protection because of the great difficulty in obtaining
> useful source code by reverse engineering the object code version. The court
> granted a preliminary injunction, based upon testimony that it would have been
> virtually impossible to have created the competing software, based solely on
> reverse engineering Plaintiff's software.

I doubt anybody here would like that decision, but fortunately for
those of us in California (where a lot of the big technology law cases
seem to originate, and where the current DVD trade secret theory is
being argued), that's North Carolina.

Does North Carolina have UTSA legislation?

-- 
Seth David Schoen <schoen@loyalty.org> | Its really terrible when FBI arrested
Temp.  http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/ | hacker, who visited USA with peacefull
down:  http://www.loyalty.org/   (CAF) | mission -- to share his knowledge with
     http://www.freesklyarov.org/      | american nation.  (Ilya V. Vasilyev)