Court Rules That Apple's Sealed Materials Can't Remain Sealed

Ars Technica is reporting that a federal judge in the Northern District of California has denied, upon remand from the Ninth Circuit, Apple's motions to seal certain materials it filed in a successful trademark action against Apple-clone manufacturer Psystar.

You may recall that bloggers and others were able to discern the content of the redacted information in some of Apple's filings and Apple has now had to admit that the blogosphere contains accurate reportings of what had been redacted. Apple argued to the court that a company can't lose its trade secret rights just because the public has guessed correctly at the contents of the trade secrets. The court, disagreeing, referred to the public's work as reverse-engineering.

The judge's order makes an interesting read and the analysis is fairly persuasive. One wonders if Apple might try to appeal this new order.