Apple C&Ds Gawker over Apple Tablet bounty

Well, that certainly didn’t take long. Less than a day after Gawker announced an up to $100,000 bounty for information about the forthcoming Apple Tablet including images, video or hands-on time, Apple’s lawyers have already sent them a cease-and-desist letter, demanding the “bounty” to be withdrawn by 6:00PM PST today.

The C&D comes by way of Michael Spillner of Apple’s lawfirm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. As Techcrunch pointed out yesterday, Spillner’s letter accuses Gawker of attempting to coerce trade secrets out of contractually bound employees. He writes:

DON'T MISS
Valleywag offers $100k bounty on Tablet information

As your offer acknowledges, Apple has maintained the types of information and things you are soliciting — “how it’ll work, its size, the name, the software”, as well as any possible details about the product’s appearance, features, and physical samples — in strict confidence. Anyone who might have access to such information would be bound under the strictest contractual obligations not to disclose the information to third parties.

Predictably, Gawker isn’t backing down, instead jokingly naming Spillner as the first winner of the bounty for offering “the most concrete evidence yet” that Apple is developing a tablet.

That’s probably true: companies just don’t C&D blogs over laughably wrong information, or offers to pay people for the same. Still, as I said earlier today, Gawker has likely bit off more than they can chew here: they are clearly in a legally tenuous position, and Apple is not going to refrain from suing them into oblivion just because of the potential of bad PR.

It’ll be interesting to see if Valleywag pulls the bounty, and what reason they’ll offer if they do. Gawker certainly will never admit that the likes of Apple legally browbeat them into submission. My guess is that if they do pull the bounty, they’ll portray themselves as canny geniuses and claim that the whole thing was a stunt to garner a confirmation of the Tablet’s existence through baiting Apple for a lawsuit.

Well, that certainly didn’t take long. Less than a day after Gawker announced up to $100,000 bounty for information about the forthcoming Apple Tablet including images, video and a hands-on time, Apple’s lawyers have already sent them a cease-and-desist, demanding the “bounty” to be withdrawn by 6:00PM PST today.

The C&D comes by way of Michael Spillner of Apple’s lawfirm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. As Techcrunch pointed out yesterday, Spillner’s letter accuses Gawker of attempting to coerce trade secrets out of contractually bound employees. He writes:

DON'T MISS
Valleywag offers $100k bounty on Tablet information

As your offer acknowledges, Apple has maintained the types of information and things you are soliciting — “how it’ll work, its size, the name, the software”, as well as any possible details about the product’s appearance, features, and physical samples — in strict confidence. Anyone who might have access to such information would be bound under the strictest contractual obligations not to disclose the information to third parties.

Predictably, Gawker isn’t backing down, instead awarding Spillner the first winner of the bounty for offering “the most concrete evidence yet” that Apple is developing a tablet.

That’s certainly true: companies just don’t C&D blogs over laughably wrong information, or offers to pay people for the same. Still, as I said earlier today, Gawker has likely bit off more than they can chew here: they are clearly in a legally tenuous position, and Apple is not going to refrain from suing them into oblivion just because of the potential of bad PR.

It’ll be interesting to see if Valleywag pulls the bounty, and what reason they’ll offer if they do: my guess is that if they do, they’ll portray themselves as canny geniuses and claim that the whole thing was a stunt to garner a confirmation through C&D from Apple, which they achieved. They certainly will never admit that the likes of Apple legally browbeat them into submission.

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