Audio of Oral Argument on Apple v. Samsung at March 26 Hearing on Public's Right to Know ~pj

Yesterday was the hearing in the appeal by both Apple and Samsung of the district court's orders to unseal more documents used in the trial in Apple I. A group of journalists were granted the right to appear as amici and argue the public's right to access. Here's where you can find the audio from the hearing. It's in two parts, but part two is very brief.

At issue was what should go into the public record of this litigation. And the biggest question discussed was, what is a trade secret? It for sure is any secret business process or information that isn't generally known, like the recipe for Coke, that your business builds the business around, the publication of which would ruin the business. Its value is its secrecy. But is the line the parties are trying to draw in this case broader than that central definition, so that they are seeking to cover pretty much any business information? There is a difference between a trade secret and a business secret, so which is which in this case? Specifically, does the law protect all historical company marketing research and financial information, as the parties hope the court will decide? It's not a silly issue they are raising. Imagine if you knew that seeking legal redress in the courts meant all your business secrets now become public knowledge? Might it hold you back from seeking the courts' help? If so, that would be detrimental. So there is a line. The question is, where is it in this case?

Reminder -- We are still prior art searching: I'll tell you some of the highlights, but please don't forget that we are still searching for prior art on Nokia's patents it claims WebRTC may infringe, specifically the VP8 video encoding scheme proposed as part of this standard, right here, and if you are free to do so, please contribute your expertise. The goal is to make the proprietary side say, "Curses, foiled again" and help to ensure that the free and open Internet can't be severely restricted by such patents. So the more prior art we find, the better. A Groklaw member sent me this this article in the Harvard Business Review, "Feeling Stumped? Innovation Software Can Help" and it is about a tool called Analogy Finder, a program that mines the U.S. Patent Database for analogous solutions. Here's the demo. Can some of you give it a whirl? Here's how you get going:

You start with two words that describe what you are looking for. ... From here, the program will take the two words and basically find all the patents that are relevant to the original goal - however that goal is expressed. It will then allow you to narrow and order the results in various ways. The program will even take into account what areas you are an expert in so you don't waste time looking at solutions that you would already have thought of.

Let's try it out and if you find anything, please post it on the article where the prior art already is under way, not on this article, or email me.