When Apple sued Psystar (and eventually won), it had to reveal certain confidential software secrets to the court, which were then kept under court seal. However, those secrets then surfaced - effectively 'pirated' - on a website and made public. Despite this, Apple wants those secrets to remain under court seal as it hasn't officially disclosed them, claiming that they still deserve trade secret protection. However, U.S. Federal District Judge William Alsup disagreed and has denied Apple's bid, saying "Apple cannot have this court seal information merely to avoid confirmation that the publicly available sources got it right." Those trade secrets contained "information about its Mac OS X operating system and computer products, including Apple's technological protection measure, system integrity checks and thermal management techniques, according to court documents." reported Bloomberg.

One might reasonably ask, why bother to keep this under court seal when the information is already out in the open? Well, Apple does have a point here: there is nothing like getting information directly from the source, in this case Apple, as the third party information may well have errors or omissions in it that won't be present from the original source, which only works in Apple's favour. Besides, it's a bit galling for Apple to have to confirm someone's leak, isn't it?