Court rules trade secrets outweigh free speech.

The California Supreme Court recently ruled that the First Amendment right to free speech does not mean trade secrets can be published on the Internet with impunity. According to experts, the ruling sets the stage for further legal scrutiny of the balance between the rights of free speech and intellectual property at a time when digital copies of software, music, and movies can be made and distributed effortlessly over the Internet.

The case, filed in 1999, pits a group of large companies--Microsoft, IBM, Twentieth Century Fox, and others--against Andrew Bunner, a computer programmer in Northern California. Bunner is accused of violating trade secrets laws by posting a piece of software on a Web site that cracks the encryption software on DVDs. The program was designed not by Bunner but by a Norwegian teenager.

The court's decision confirms that the First Amendment is not a shield to allow thieves to distribute stolen property and establishes an overall precedent that an injunction on the basis of trade secrets is not a First Amendment violation. The decision said that individuals don't have a First-Amendment right to spill trade secrets, legal experts say. But others say the trade secrets claim is the suit's weakness--Bunner did not create the program, he violated no contract with the DVD Copy Control Association, and by the time he posted the software online, hundreds of others had done so, too.

In limiting the power of free speech arguments, the California Supreme Court also sent the case back to a lower court to review the trade secrets aspects of the case.