The Gizmodo story says that the patron “called a lot of Apple numbers and tried to find someone who was at least willing to transfer his call to the right person, but no luck. So the bar patron who found it was obligated to try to return it to its owner. Furthermore, the finder “must use reasonable means for the purpose of finding the owner.”Īpplying this precedent to the Gizmodo situation, the phone clearly was lost at the bar, not abandoned. It held that when a person finds lost property, “the duty of the finder is to keep the property for the purpose of finding the owner,” at least where there is a “clue to ownership,” i.e., some way to determine who the owner is. She argued on appeal that the money was found, not stolen, but the court of appeals affirmed. The defendant was charged with, and convicted of, receiving stolen goods. They picked up the bag and split the money they found inside. In Moore, the defendant and two friends found a bag marked “Bank of North Carolina” lying on a sidewalk outside a pharmacy. However, this argument would be unlikely to prevail in light of State v. Gizmodo might argue that it was not stolen, but found. The starting point for the analysis is whether the phone was, in fact, stolen. Could Gizmodo - or whichever employee of Gizmodo actually bought and tinkered with the phone - be prosecuted criminally for possession of stolen goods? I think so. But imagine that this whole saga played out in North Carolina. There’s been some talk about whether Apple will sue Gizmodo under California’s Uniform Trade Secrets Act, which at least one commentator believes “makes it pretty clear that buying a stolen prototype, determining it is authentic and includes valuable information in the form of trade secrets, and then publishing the information to earn money and notoriety for doing so is something that will expose you to legal liability.” Needless to say, I don’t know anything about that. Eventually, Apple asked for the phone back, and Gizmodo agreed to return it. Gizmodo examined and disassembled the phone, and posted about it in exhaustive detail. He eventually noticed that it wasn’t a current model iPhone, made some effort to contact Apple about it - more on which below - and after he couldn’t get through to anyone in authority, decided to sell it to Gizmodo for $5,000. Another patron picked up the phone, and when the Apple employee didn’t come back, took it home with him. He went to a bar in Redwood City, California, likely drank a few beers, and accidentally left his phone on his bar stool when he headed out. State alumnus - was field-testing a prototype of the new phone. An Apple employee - who happens to be an N.C. The basic facts appear to be as follows: Apple’s working on its next-generation iPhone, which has been rumored to have lots of fantastic new features, like a super-high-resolution screen, a front-facing camera for videoconferencing, etc. (This will eventually connect to North Carolina criminal law, I promise.) One of my favorites is my Apple iPhone, so I’ve watched with great interest the saga unfolding over at Gizmodo, a leading gadget blog.
Regular readers of this blog know that I’m interested in electronic gadgets.
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