Manobeer @ Fri May 14, 2010 1:16 am wrote:
BigJer @ Thu May 13, 2010 10:22 pm wrote:
You go to court and the first thing their lawyer is going to do is file papers for discovery which means they get to look at your hard drive. Now, let's assume we're all squeaky clean here and nothing bad is discovered, so the judge throws out the case. They still got to audit your hard drive and it cost you time if not money to go through the hassle.
I am no lawyer either, but no way the judge orders your hard drives over to sound choice for inspection... Only songs that were allegedly played and being sued for will be addressed by a real judge, "YES YOUR HONOR, THOSE SONGS WERE PLAYED BY ME AND ARE ON MY SYSTEM AND HERE ARE MY ORIGINAL DISCS...".
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I did a bit more followup with a couple of attorney's I know. They had mixed feelings on several things related to the case. This was just a very informal discussion I had with the two of them so these are just their instincts, not formal legal opinions, but...
Both attorneys agreed that Sound Choice could certainly ask the court to see the contents of your hard drive. The lady attorney's theory was that the KJ being examined could try to avoid discovery by claiming to have proprietary information on their hard drive which could hurt their business if revealed. The male attorney countered that a good judge would then examine the hard drive in his chambers to determine what exact proprietary information the KJ were claiming to have and to determine whether or not this revelation really would hurt their business sufficiently to outweigh the other party's right to discovery -- not very likely in his opinion -- but again this was all just informal discussion.
The two attorneys also had different views of the validity of the trademark infringement theory with the lady being of the mind that the case was rather iffy while the guy felt that trademark law generally offered stronger protection than copyright law.
I'd love to see some transcripts from some of these cases -- pretty interesting stuff being bandied about there and a bit hard to say how it's all going to come out...