United States v. Genovese
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
409 F. Supp. 2d 253 (2005)
- Written by Alex Ruskell, JD
Facts
William Genovese (defendant) was charged with unlawfully downloading and selling a trade secret under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996. Genovese had posted a message on his website that read “win2000 source code jacked . . . im sure if you look hard you can find it or if you wanna buy it ill give you a password to my ftp.” A Microsoft investigator sent Genovese $20 in response to the message, and Genovese provided him access to the source code for Windows 2000. Under the act, a trade secret was defined as being something not generally known to the public that the owner had taken reasonable measures to safeguard. At trial, Genovese argued that the act violated his due-process rights because it was unlawfully vague and did not sufficiently describe what acts were prohibited. Specifically, Genovese argued that because he found the Microsoft source code on the Internet after it had been released to the public by a third party, he could not have known that the code was a trade secret not generally known to the public and that Microsoft had taken reasonable measures to safeguard it.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Pauley, J.)
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