Apple whacked with bloggers’ legal fees

By Michael Fraase

Wednesday, 31 January 2007 07:06PM CST

Section: Censorship

No AppleMac News Network reports that Apple has been ordered to pay US$700,000 in legal fees associated with several Web sites’ successful defense of subpoenas issued in the disclosure of information that Apple claimed violated its trade secrets. Apple held that the webloggers were not entitled to the First Amendment or California Shield Law protections offered professional journalists.

The Santa Clara County Court rejected Apple’s argument, finding that online journalists—professional or amateur—enjoy the same protections as professional print journalists. The court stated in its ruling, “We can think of no workable test or principle that would distinguish ‘legitimate’ from ‘illegitimate’ news.” Going further, the court found that the Web sites were “conceptually indistinguishable from publishing a newspaper.”

The court awarded the Web sites 2.2 times their actual legal fees as a deterrent to Apple and other companies from harrassing journalists with unfounded lawsuits.

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