Apple has gained the support of Intel and Genentech in its effort to make online publishers (such as the Mac rumor sites it is suing) to disclose their sources of confidential information about unreleased Apple products. The two companies filed court papers in San Jose, Calif., this week supporting a ruling permitting Apple to subpoena the sites and an e-mail service provider. “What happened here wasn’t any kind of protected journalism,” said Steven Hirsch, a lawyer for Genentech. “It was the posting of raw, unmediated stolen property to a Web site. Companies need to be able to take reasonable and limited steps to find out who is stealing their trade secrets and essentially destroying their value by having them posted to the Web.”
