yacc: public domain?

[Geoff Kuenning]

In article <217 at vax2.fluke.UUCP> kurt at fluke.UUCP (Kurt Guntheroth) writes:

>Does the trade secret act deal with the legality of
>some hacker breaking into a university computer, taking accessible
>information, and using/distributing/publishing it?

As I understand it, it's not an act, it's a body of law relating to trade
secrets that goes a long way back (possibly to English common law).

To answer your question, yes, the law deals with this quite explicitly.  Most
articles on trade secrets for the computer layman have covered this point
(which is where I got it).  The hacker is liable for the full value of the
software he/she took from AT&T and published (good luck recovering, Bell!).
However, anyone who acquired that software from net.sources *in good faith*
CANNOT be held liable.  (Good faith means that nobody on this net should try to
claim that they didn't know the UNIX kernel was proprietary when it was
posted to net.sources).  Furthermore, once a *single* party has acquired the
sources by legal means and in good faith, the trade secret is effectively
gone.  Poof.

>Doesn't the
>non-disclosure agreement only cover non-disclosure of information you could
>not easily obtain elsewhere?

Yes.  There is a specific provision in trade secret law that prevents you from
recovering if the defendant can show that the secrets were *not* acquired by
any illegal means.  (Note that this is not true of US military-secret law.)
This is similar to the patent and copyright provisions that basically keep
you from getting protection on something that's been around for 50 years
unpatented or uncopyrighted.

There is also a specific provision in at least California non-disclosure law
(and in many fair non-disclosure agreements) that voids a non-disclosure
agreement regarding any information that the student or employee knew before
signing.  (I presume, though I don't know, that there is an exception to the
exception to handle the case where the "prior knowledge" was covered by
an earlier nondisclosure).

BTW, Henry is right about the AT&T (source) contract covering *everything*.
However, my position is that this contract has been (and continues to be)
violated sufficiently often that AT&T has no chance of claiming trade secret
protection on the UNIX binaries.  There are just too many people who have been
given binary access on a casual basis.
-- 

	Geoff Kuenning
	...!ihnp4!trwrb!desint!geoff