Ethics

From a story by Zusha Elinson of The Recorder:

It was just eight years ago that then-Marvell general counsel Matthew Gloss, patent attorney Eric Janofsky and VP of engineering Kaushik Banerjee rang up Virginia Wei, an in-house lawyer for rival Jasmine Networks. Wei didn't pick up, so Gloss left a message. And then he hung up. Or so he thought. Due to the complexities of speakerphone technology, the trio kept talking, and Wei's voice mail continued to do the thing it does best: record.

Unfortunately for Gloss and Co., they didn't talk about what they were allegedly going to eat that day for lunch. Instead, as the 6th District Court of Appeal later put it, the three "openly discussed theft of Jasmine's trade secrets and the unlawful hiring of the engineering group as well as the potential consequence of jail for the conduct." Key soundbite: "If we took that IP on the pretense of just evaluating it, and put it in our product ...," Marvell IP lawyer Janofsky says at one point, according to the court.

When Jasmine sued Marvell for trade secret theft in September 2001, lawyers for Marvell tried their damnedest to get the damning voice mail excluded from evidence. A Santa Clara County Superior Court judge granted the request, holding it was protected by attorney-client privilege. But the 6th District reversed, holding that the privilege had been waived because of, among other things, the pesky little crime-fraud exception. Last year, the state Supreme Court agreed.